I  n  Cod 


AN.    0 


IN  GOD'S  OUT-OF-DOORS 


THE  WORKS  OF  WILLIAM   A.  QUAYLE 


"THE  POET'S   POET  AND   OTHER  ESSAYS 


"A  HERO  AND  SOME   OTHER   FOLK" 


A  STUDY  IN  CURRENT  SOCIAL  THEORIES 


"THE   BLESSED   LIFE" 


IN  GOD'S  OUT-OF-DOORS 


IN  GOD'S  OUT-OF 
DOORS 


WILLIAM  A.  QUAYLE 


CINCINNATI:    JENNINGS   AND    GRAHAM 
NEW    YORK:     EATON    AND    MAINS 


a- 


COPYRIGHT,  1902,  BY 
JENNINGS   &   PYE 


PRELUDE 


RANKLY,  little  is  to  be  anticipated  from  the  Author 
of  this  book.  He  is  far  from  being  a  specialist. 
He  is  not  entomologist  nor  botanist  nor  ornitholo- 
gist. He  confesses  to  knowing  which  end  of  a 
flower  the  root  grows  on  and  but  little  more. 

He    purposes    writing    because    he    loves    God's 
Out-of-Doors.      The   blue   sky   touches   him   to       ji 
sadness,   like   reading   a  letter   from   one   much 
loved  and  long  dead;   and  the 
shadows    in    quiet    water    affect    him    like    a  A 
prayer.      The  author's  wish  is  to  people  other  < 
hearts  with   love  of  flower  and  woodland  path 
and    drifting    cloud    and    dimming    light    and 
moonlit    distance     and     starlight    and    voices 
of   bird   and   wind   and    cadence   of    the    rainfall    and   the 
storm,  and  to  make  men  and  women  more  the  lovers  of 
this    bewildering    world    fashioned    in    loveliness    by    the 
artist  hand  of  God.     And  beyond  all  this,   he   would  be 
glad   to   bring  them    into   fellowship   and    love  with    God, 
which  is  the  poesy  and  eloquence  of  life. 

WILLIAM  A.  QUAYLE 


4977,39 


The  photographs  interpretive  of  Nature  in  this  book 
are  by  Mr.  George  N.  Jennings,  Mrs.  Jacoby,  Mr. 
J.  F.  Earhart,  Mr.  Wm.  Simpkinson,  Mr.  Roy  Holtz, 
Mr.  Charles  C.  Woods,  Mr.  Charles  Schurman,  and 
Mr.  Lare;  but  the  great  majority  are  by  Dr.  Charles 
S.  Parmenter;  while  the  drawings  are  by  Margaret 
Robbins.  ::::::: 


PLACES  AND  THINGS 
IN  GOD'S  OUT-OF-DOORS 

HERE  MADE  MENTION  OF 

/.  In  God's  Out-of-Doors, 

II.  On  Seeing,  - 

III.  When  Spring  Comes  Home, 

IV.  Winter  Trees, 
V.  Golden-rod, 

VI.  I  Go  A- Fishing,    - 

VII.  The  Goings  of  the  Winds, 
VIII.  The  Falls  of  St.  Croix, 

IX.  When  Autumn  Fades, 

X.  A   Walk  Along  a  Railroad  in  June, 

XI.  The  Windings  of  a  Stream, 

XII.  Four  Seasons^One  Year, 

XIII.  On  Winter  Panes,       - 

XIV.  Walking  to  My  Farm, 
XV.  My  Farm, 

XVI.  Gloaming,      - 

XVII.  Good-Night, 


15 
23 
33 
37 
69 
77 
93 
107 
119 
123 
137 
145 
161 
165 
177 
225 
232 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

Page 

AUTUMN  LEAVES  (Frontispiece),    -  4 

SPRING  IS  WAKING  (Title  Page),  5 
FLAGS,         -------- 

'A  BLACKBERRY  BOW  OF  PROMISE,                                                -  9 

LILACS, H 

A  SPRIG  OF  WILD  CRAB  APPLE,                 ......  \2 

PEACH  BLOSSOMS,    -  13 

APPLE  BLOSSOMS,         -                                                                         -  14 

GOD'S  OUT-OF-DOORS,     -  15 

SUNSET,           -----------  17 

A  ROBIN  REDBREAST  IN  HIS  FAVORITE  HAUNT,       -        -  20 

WHERE  WIND  FLOWERS  BLOOM,      -------  21 

POND  LILIES, 23 

THE  HAWTHORN  WITH  ITS  BLOOM  OF  SNOW,                                   -  25 

EMPTY,       --------  27 

A  WOODLAND  POOL  OF  DOGTOOTH  VIOLETS, 

ON  AUTUMN  HILLSIDES,  29 

WHERE  MEADOW  LARKS  SING,                   -  31 

A  TOUCH  OF  SPRING, -  33 

WHEN  SPRING  COMES  HOME,   -------        34,  35 

WINTER  TREES, 37 

THE  OAK,       ---------                  -        -  39 

DESOLATE,  43 

BIRCH-TREES, -  45 

BEECH-TREES,  47 

A  HACKBERRY  PILLAR,       ---------  49 

A  WALNUT, _---.-  50 

THE  MAPLE, -  51 

THE  SPREADING  ELM, 53 

A  WINTER  COTTONWOOD,           --------  56 

11 


THE  SHELL-BARK  HICKORY, 

MY  WILLOW,  ______ 

THE  LOCUST,     ------- 

SYCAMORES, 

THROUGH  THE  PINE  WOODS, 

GOLDEN-ROD,         -         -         - 

WHERE  GOLDEN-RODS  BLOOM,   - 

WINTER  GOLDEN-ROD,    - 

THE  OPEN  ROAD,  ----- 

LAYS  SNARES  LIKE  AN  ASSASSIN,  - 
THE  SPOILS,      ------ 

CROSSING  THE  STREAM,    - 
REEDS  ALONG  THE  BANKS, 
ALONG  THE  STREAM,  - 

THE  SOLE  PINE,        -         -         -         -         - 

WHERE  THE  POLE  WAS  LOST, 

THE  GOING  OF  THE  WIND,     - 

WHERE  ZEPHYRS  TOUCH  THE  WILLOWS, 

THE  WIND  PUFFS  THE  SAIL, 

THUNDERHEAD,    

THE  SURF, 

IN  BATTLE  MOOD,         - 
A  PATCH  OF  CLOVER,      - 
A  SINGING  BROOK,       - 
THE  OLD  MILL, 

WHENCE  THE  SPRINGS  FLOW, 
THE  FALLS  OF  ST.  CROIX,      - 
PINE  TOPS  EDGE  THE  SKY, 
THE  WALLED  ROCKS,       -         -         -     .  - 
PINES  RAGGED  AS  SPANISH  SOLDIERS, 
SUNRISE  ON  THE  RIVER, 
THE  OTHER  SHORE,     - 
THE  MOANING  TREES,    -        _        -        - 

12 


Pag* 
58 

-  59 
60 

-  63 
67 

-  69 
71 

74,  75 
77 

-  79 
83 

-  84 
85 

-  87 
88 

-  90 
93 

-  95 
98 

-  99 
100 

-  101 
103 

-  105 
107 

-  109 
111 

-  112 
113 

-  114 
116 

-  117 
119 


Page 

WHEN  AUTUMN  FADES,  120 

THE  SLEEPY-EYED  CATTLE,        --------  123 

QUAIL,         ------  125 

SWAMP  GRASSES,         ----------  128 

WHERE  THE  WATER  LILIES  GROW,      ------  129 

THE  LEANING  WILLOW,       ---------  131 

THE  BRIDGE, ------  134 

BLUE  FLAGS,          -----------  135 

A  SILVER  STREAM,            -                  -  137 

BETWEEN  HIGH  BANKS, -  139 

IN  WINDING  WAYS,           ---------  142 

THROUGH  LONG  GRASSES,         - -        -  143 

LOITERING,         -----------  144 

THE  BIRTHDAY  OF  THE  YEAR,           -------  145 

SPRING, _____         _  147 

AN  IVY  PILLAR,    -----------  150 

SUMMER,    ------------  151 

A  SUMMER  HARVEST,          -        -         -        -        -        -        -        -        -  153 

AUTUMN,    ------------  155 

MY  AUTUMN  HILLSIDE,        ---------  156 

WINTER,     -----                  _______  157 

ON  WINTER  PANES,     ----------  161 

VIOLETS  AND  FLEUR-DE-LIS,          --_--_-  162 

13 


THE  CREEPING  VINE, 

IN  THE  COUNTRY  QUIET, 

THE  ROAD  TO  MY  FARM,  - 

THE  LOWING  CATTLE,     - 

THE  CLOUDS  ARE  BONNIE, 

SHADOWS,  ._.__. 

THE  CROW'S  NEST,      - 

THE  BIRDS'  WINTER  BED,      - 

THE  COMING  HORSE, 

THE  TENANT  PLOWS  THE  FIELD, 

CORN  SHOCKS  PITCH  THEIR  TENTS, 

THE  OWL,  ----._ 

FARM  FRIENDS,    ----- 

THE  CROWS,      ------ 

CRACKS  NUTS  AND  SQUIRREL  JOKES, 

THE  GOLDEN  DAYS  OF  HARVEST, 

THE  PLUM  THICKET,  - 

A  SPRAY  OF  APPLE  BLOSSOMS,    - 

THE  RAVINE,         - 

THE  SPRING,     ------ 

THE  VILLAIN  AND  HIS  FRIENDS,       - 

JACK  IN  THE  PULPIT,     - 

THE  TENANT'S  COW,  - 

TALL  TREES  RIM  THE  CREST, 

LEAFLESS  TREES, 

MY  WILD  ROSE  THICKET, 

EVENING  SHADOWS,    - 

GLOAMING,         ---___ 

THE  POOL  IN  THE  MEADOW,      - 

THE  DAY  IS  DONE, 

14 


Page 

163 

165 

167 

170 

172 

•73 

174 

175 

177 

179 

185 

188 

189 

191 

193 

195 

197 

200 

202 

205 

209 

213 

215 

217 

218 

221 

225 

227 

231 

232 


IN  GOD'S  OUT-OF-DOORS 


SUNSET 


r 


IN  GOD'S  OUT-OF-DOORS 

OME  people  do  not  well  know  that  God  is  out-of-doors. 
I  marvel  at  them.  He  is  everywhere — "though  I  take 
the  wings  of  the  morning" — but  so  God  is  in  dusks 
and  dawns  and  twilights  and  noons,  in  doors  and  out, 
at  toil  and  on  holidays,  where  deserts  keep  tryst  with 
the  moonlight,  and  where  the  wide  sea  can  behold  no 
shore — God  is  always  wherever  I  have  gone.  He  is 
in  the  little  room  where  a  baby  learns  its  prayer 
from  mother  lips,  kneeling,  and  with  fingers  inter- 
laced (God  loves  a  sight  like  this),  and  in  the 
church  where  congregations  meet  to  wait  on  the 
Lord,  and  "worship  in  the  beauty  of  holiness,"  and  where  in  God's  acre 
we  bury  our  beloved  out  of  the  sight  of  our  eyes  dimmed  with  weeping 
— God  is  there;  but  he  is  also  out  where  he  has  planted  the  wind 
flowers,  and  where  the  hawthorn  stoops  beneath  its  drifted  snows  fresh 
fallen,  and  where  sweet  eglantine  blooms  and  the  fringed  gentian,  and 
where  the  Indian  pipe  grows  in  the  dusk  of  quiet  woods,  and  where  the 
maple  flushes  a  little  in  the  early  spring  and  sows  the  ground  beneath, 
where  its  shadows  will  soon  shut  sunlight  out,  with  its  own  pink  blos- 
soms, and  where  the  sycamore  stands  in  winter  with  its  yellow  apples 
like  a  jest  of  harvest  for  a  tree  so  bulky,  or  where  dodder  plant,  yellow 
as  gold,  steals  saps  from  other  plants  to  feed  its  splendors  on,  and  where 
the  sea-fowls  float  like  a  ghost  of  voices  through  the  night  skies,  heard 
but  unseen, — God  is  out-of-doors  also  God  is  everywhere. 

He  made  the  Out-of-doors  and  loves  it,  and  haunts  it,  as  Jesus  did 
the  mountain  and  the  sea.  "Behold  the  lilies  how  they  grow,"  He 
said  whose  name  is  sweet;  and  so  I  will  heed  them;  and,  He  said, 
"Are  not  two  sparrows  sold  for  a  farthing?"  True,  sparrows  are  very 
plentiful  and  bickering,  but  I  will  look  at  them,  for  He  made  them  and 

19 


:-•*•:  V  _ 
W'i  ^&4t 


pointed  them  out  to  me  The 
trees  where  the  birds  nest  and 
the  birds  that  nest  there,  the 
shadows  where  the  herds  lie 
and  the  herds  panting  in  the 
shadows  with  luminant  eyes, 
buds  that  swell  toward  blossom- 
ing and  blossoms  in  haste 
toward  fruitage,  white  sea  gull 
and  robin  redbreast  with  his 
song  like  the  gurgle  of  laughter 
in  a  baby's  throat,  high  sea 
clifts  leaning  seaward  and  sea 
marshes  through  which  the  salt 
tides  flood  their  crystal  rivers, 
fern  and  oak  and  sweet  sur- 
prise of  mosses,  rivulet  and 
broad  river,  plunge  of  waterfall 
and  placid  stream  where  the 


A  ROBIN   REDBREAST  IN   HIS   FAVORITE    HAUNT-AN   APPLE-TREE 


current  is  asleep,  russet  grove  of  scrub  oak  on  winter  hills,  and  the  vivid 
greens  of  willows  in  fresh  leaf  in  early  springtime, — I  will  behold  "them 
all."  They  belong  in  God's  Out-of-doors;  and  God  is  out  there  looking 
his  premises  over.  And  if  he  will  let  me  I  will  go  with  him.  And  as  I 
look  his  way  to  ask  him  if  I  may  go,  he  looking  my  way,  before  I  say  a 
word,  says,  "Come,  let  us  go  into  my  Out-of-doors;"  and  I  am  going 
with  HIM  into  God's  Out-of-doors. 


WHERE  WIND   FLOWERS   BLOOM 


21 


ON  SEEING 


THE   HAWTHORN   WITH    ITS   BLOOM   OF  SNOW 


ON  SEEING 


WOULD  reverently  add  to  the  list  of  the 
beatitudes  this,  "Blessed  are  those  who  help  us 
to  see."  From  my  heart  I  bless  such  men  and 
women.  All  the  good  must  pray  to  God, 
"Help  us  to  see."  The  pity  of  this  world  is 
not  its  limitations,  but  ours.  Into  the  earth  as 
into  a  king's  golden  goblet,  God  has  poured  all 
things  which  minister  to  an  immortal  and  growing 
life.  He  has  made  a  world  pregnant  with  ideas.  Vistas 
open  as  through  a  sunrise  world  to  wide  meadow  lands  beyond,  where 
are  sunshine  and  flowers  and  birds  swaying  in  the  tall  grasses  and  sing- 
ing as  they  sway  and  flute  notes  of  singing  waters  and  odors  of  damp 
sod  and  blooming  flowers,  and  a  meadow  lark  s  dulcet  note  and  swaying 
shadows  of  the  woods  when  rocked  by  south  winds  and 
billowy  motion  of  the  grass  like  some  emerald  sea  with 
tide  setting  to  shore.  We  are  always  on  the  way  to 
God's  open  as  we  are  always  on  our  way  to  God  if  we 
would  have  it  so.  Nothing  of  God's  perishes,  but 
endures.  We  have  not  gotten  to  the  end,  seeing 
God  is  forever  holding  something  back.  We 
can  not  bankrupt  his  opportunities  nor  provi- 
dences nor  knowledge  nor  joy;  and  how  good 
that  is!  Life  is  as  a  book  whose  best  pages 
are  as  yet  uncut,  and  a  growing  interest  holds 
us,  filling  the  mind  as  a  flood  tide  the  sinuous 
shore  line 

Who  knows  what  is  hid  under  the  open 
sky?      Some   birds  build  their  nest  in  plain 

27 


sight,  and  so  hide  their  summer's  house.  The  very  openness  was  a 
hiding  process.  And  under  the  wide,  high  sky,  where  hang  bird  and  star 
and  flower,  and  tree-twig  with  its  bursting  green, — under  that  open  these 
beatitudes  are  hidden  as  ferns  are  hid  under  a  sandstone  ledge,  deep  in 
a  wood  and  wet  with  a  perpetual  shower  of  dripping  from  the  stony  roof. 
So  much  to  see,  so  little  seen;  that  is  our  grief.  How  we  have  let  sum- 
mers waste!  Sparrows  are  not  less  provident.  Nature's  bounty  runs 
to  waste,  or,  what  is  worse,  runs  to  weed.  And  a  poet  thought  of  this 


A  WOODLAND   POOL  OF  DOGTOOTH  VIOLETS 

(and,  as  for  that,  what  have  not  the  poets  thought  of  ?     Some  one  of 
them  has  left  a  caress  on  every  flower  of  the  field  as  the  winds  do): 

"There  are  flowerets  down  in  the  valley  low 
And  over  the  mountain  side, 
That  were  never  praised  by  a  human  voice 
Nor  by  human  eye  descried; 
But  sweet  as  the  breath  of  the  royal  rose 
Is  the  perfume  they  exhale; 
And  where  they  bloom  and  why  they  bloom 
The  good  Lord  knoweth  well.'" 
28 


ON  AUTUMN    HILLSIDES 


How  this  waste  shames  us  since  men  and  women  have  eyes  for 
seeing!  They  are  not  blind.  It  were  a  mercy  if  one  did  not  see  that 
he  were  blind,  because  the  blind  are  not  blameworthy  for  their  lack  of 
sight.  Deserts  are  flowerless;  but  this  habitable  world  is  a  tangle  of 
beauties,  like  the  interlacing  of  the  sunshine  and  the  shadows  in  a  sum- 
mer wood  when  sunlight  rules  the  sky.  A  world  full  of  loveliness,  and 
we  see  it  not!  That  sounds  a  requiem.  "Having  eyes,  see  not,"  is  our 
pathos.  That  word  haunts  me  as  mourners  haunt  the  grave  of  their 
dear  dead.  May  not  a  prophet's  prayer  for  his  servant  be  a  prayer 
uttered  in  our  behalf  as  well?  "I  pray  thee,  open  the  young  man's  eyes 
that  he  may  see."  So  many  dusks  and  dawns  nobody  watches.  I 
resent  people  running  mad  over  carnivals  and  slighting  the  pageants  of 
the  morning  and  the 
night,  worth  a  pil- 
grimage about  our 
world  to  catch  sight 
of  once.  One  sunset 
in  a  decade;  how 
thronged  the  way 
would  be  that  led  to 
its  mountain !  One  in 
a  week;  who  watches? 
Pity  the  blind  who,  having  eyes,  see  not.  Edward  Rowland  Sill  tells  a 
benignant  angel  standing  near, 

"This  is  our  earth — most  friendly  earth  and  fair;" 

and  he  was  right.     His  praise  was  scant,  not  profuse. 

A  mercy  to  the  heart  is  the  ubiquity  of  this  loveliness.  Some  beauty 
abides  everywhere.  Deserts  are 'flowerless;  but  night  and  moonlight  on 
the  far-stretching  sands  are  so  beautiful  as  fairly  to  stoop  beneath  their 
load.  Beauty  blooms  unseen  in  shaded  woodlands;  in  corn-rows;  in  field 
corners;  on  barbed  wires,  where  wild  vines  tangle  and  blur  the  green  of 
leaves  with  the  surprise  of  flowers;  on  garbage  heaps;  among  cinders; 
on  rocky  ledges;  in  quiet  pools  as  lilies;  in  quiet  skies  as  stars;  purpling 
the  hollows  in  remote  mountains,  and  making  the  far  hills  blue  as  the  far 
sea;  voyaging  as  clouds;  stationary  as  trees;  wandering  as  a  child  with 
tangled  hair  and  laughing  face;  vines  visible,  drooping  over  tumbling 
sheds  or  modest  cottage  or  on  stake-and-rider  fences,  shading  windows 
of  poverty;  thrilling  mornings  with  singing  and  soaring  larks,  and  in 

31 


twilight  with  the  vespers  of  the  whip-poor-will;  the  plover's  cry;  a 
child's  laughter  and  a  child's  face;  a  fair  woman  with  her  lovelit  eyes; 
a  boy  with  dirty  and  gleeful  face ;  a  leafless  tree  in  a  bare  pasture ;  the 
distilled  odors  of  night  and  dews, — so  beauty  blooms  and  such  things  are 
daily  companionships;  and  we  scarcely  know  that  they  are  fair.  What  a 
world  Ruskin  found  in  "The  Stones  of  Venice!"  and  what  rarer  world 
would  God  show  every  one  of  us  if  we  would  let  him!  Health  to  body 
and  soul  is  in  this  out-of-doors.  A  walk  through  dewy  fields  is  to  pass 
into  an  enchanted  land.  Sometimes  a  friend  says,  "See,  a  falling  star." 
We  look  and  see  no  passing  light,  and  he  replies,  "It  has  fallen."  No 
brief  flight  of  falling  star  is  comparable  for  loveliness,  though  I  love  its 
light,  with  what  we  wade  knee-deep  in  as  grasses  growing  in  ravines,  and 
we  have  no  thought  for  it.  Nature  as  God  left  it  is  so  much,  has  such  a 
pensive  delight,  and  serves  as  evangel  of  a  gospel  of  contentment  and 
peace.  They  are  not  poor  who  see.  Riches  unspeakable  are  theirs.  I 
would  for  myself  and  for  others  pray,  "Teach  me  to  see  lest  I  be  poor 
beyond  the  depths  of  poverty."  If  I  had  might,  as  I  would  guide  travelers 
to  a  mountain  which  swept  eyes  over  a  visionary  scene,  so  would  I 
guide  to  the  vision  of  every  day's  delight. 

To  go  abroad  is  not  our  need.  To  stay  at  home  and  have  a  variant 
world  report  to  us  as  if  we  were  emperors,  that  is  traveledness.  God  will 
leave  nothing  wholly  commonplace.  He  is  against  common  things  in 
that  he  exalts  them  into  uncommon  loveliness.  A  dead  tree-trunk  is 
overgrown  with  moss  and  vines;  and  tawny  deserts  have  haunting  dis- 
tances and  solitudes  enthralling  to  imagination;  the  homeliest  face  has 
a  radiant  light  upon  it  when  love  goes  by  its  door  with  loitering  steps; 
winter  has  hospitalities  genial  as  those  of  summer.  All  the  year  is 
hospitable  if  we  are  neighborly. 

1  •Flower  in  the  crannied  wall, 
I  pluck  you  out  of  the  crannies, " 

and  hold  you  with  a  sense  of  joy  not  to  be  lightly  told.    Writing  poetry  is 
not  our  classic  achievement  after  all.     Seeing  and  feeling  and  being 
poetry  is  life's  best  work. 
Come,  for 

"The  swan  on  still  St.  Mary's  lake 
Floats  double,  swan  and  shadow.'" 

Lord,  teach  me  to  see! 

32 


WHEN  SPRING  COMES  HOME 


hen  Spring  comes  home 
<^l^Qw  fer  /o^  gttjrimage, 
~  Unwearied,  and  unmarked  by 
When  Spring  comes  home!— 


How  wild  with  glee 
The  laughing  children  and  the 
And  singing  birds  and  golden  hours, 
And  streams  will  be 
When  Spring  comes  home! 


dull  bank 

Shall  wake  to  smile  with 
Forgetting  Winter's  sad  regrets, 

And  joys,  to  thank 

Sweet  Spring  come. 


down  long  hills 
There  babble  like  a  happy  child, 
And  swirl  and  leap  with  Springtime  wild 

The  crystal  rills, 

Sweet  Spring  come  home! 

When  Spring  comes  home! 
How  passing  sweet  it  is  to  know 
Our  spirits  like  God's  violets  grow,  .  -4^* 

When  Spring  comes  home! 

And  Spring  comes  home  ! 
When  life's  long  Winter  faints  and  dies, 
There  dawns  upon  our  watching  eyes 

Heaven's  Spring  come  home. 


WINTER  TREES 


WINTER  TREES 


;         EAFLESS  trees  are,  in  ordinary  thinking,  a  synonym 
*       J  of   desolation.     They   are   nude,  forlorn,  forsaken, 
mjti  and  are  shivering  through  the  winter  as  a  beggar 
*  if*  who   thinks  winter  the  necessary   tribulation   that 
preludes  spring.     I  have  not  so  learned  the  trees. 
Sympathy   extended  to  them  is,   as   I   confidently 
believe,  misapplied.     Winter  trees  are  not  mendi- 
cants.    The  last  thing  they  do  is  to  ask  alms.     In 
them,  as  I  have  become  acquainted  with  them,  is 
a  sturdy  independence  worthy  of  a  Puritan  colonist. 
These  words  of  Marianne  Farningham  are  part  true, 
not  wholly,  though  more  nearly  than  the  average 
estimate : 

"Poverty-stricken  and  gaunt  they  stand, 
Dotted  about  o'er  the  hard  brown  land; 
Stripped  of  their  beauty  they  moan  and  sigh 
To  the  pitiless  breeze  as  it  rushes  by: 
Leafless,  forsaken,  of  song  bereft, 

They  are  like  a  life  with  no  pleasure  left : 

\ 

Beautiful  even  though  stripped  and  bare, 
Are  the  trees  that  are  planted  everywhere; 
Winter' s  best  beauty  belongs  to  them, 
To  their  giant  trunks  and  feathery  stem, 
And  they  bravely  stand  in  the  silent  wood, 
Like  a  patient  life  that  is  nobly  good;''1 

though  I  feel  certain  the  trees  will  love  her  scarcely  more  because  she 
wrote  of  them,  unless  they  are  touched,  as  all  good  lives  should  be,  by 
thought  given  by  the  true  hearts  of  women.  Winter  trees  stand  and 
endure — but  they  battle  and  enjoy  and  are  beautiful  as  well.  If  I  were 

41 


to  choose  between  leafless  trees  and  leafy  trees,  I  confess  not  to  be 
certain  as  to  my  choice,  though  I  am  sure  the  winter  trees  enjoy  them- 
selves not  less  than  trees  of  summer  time.  To  think  that  winter  trees 
are  forlorn  and  beautyless  is  common.  They  are  to  my  belief  warlike, 
strenuous,  conquering,  magnificent.  Summer  is  the  trees'  furlough: 
winter  is  their  campaign — one  long  battle  both  by  night  and  day. 
Winter  rules  them  and  gives  them  a  hundred  giants'  thews.  They  are 
as  strong  as  Cassar's  soldiers  and  heroic  as  Mark  Antony's  veterans. 

In  winter  the  individuality  of  trees  comes  out.  In  summer  their 
leaves  are  their  chief  circumstance  and  obscure  their  individuality.  We 
can  not  get  at  a  tree's  shape  in  summer.  It  is  shut  in  of  its  own  leaves 
and  shadow;  but  when  winter,  with  icy  sword  blade,  hacks  away  the  last 
tatter  of  summer  finery,  and  leaves  the  tree  to  stand,  naked  as  an 
Indian  warrior,  then  does  it  proclaim  itself.  To  see  the  shadow  cast 
upon  the  snow  or  brown  leaves  (snow  is  better  for  taking  a  tree's 
silhouette,  and  moonlight  is  better  than  sunlight),  is  to  get  acquainted 
with  the  tree.  But  by  moonlight,  on  the  snow,  stand  long  and  see  the 
black  and  white  picture  of  an  elm-tree,  or  oak,  or  willow,  or  walnut,  or 
sycamore.  Pine  and  cedar  take  poor  pictures  so,  because  their  foliage 
is  perennial.  To  take  a  picture  of  a  pine-tree  always  take  it  at  noon 
against  a  sky  of  intense  blue  (than  such  sight  there  is  no  lovelier  in 
heaven,  especially  if  one  could  in  the  picture  take  the  music  winds  and 
pines,  twin  minstrels,  make).  I  love  trees  all  the  year  through — in 
spring  when  their  coy  green  is  hinted  at  rather  than  come ;  in  summer 
when  they  make  dense  shadow  and  one  might  sleep  from  sunrise  until 
the  night,  nor  have  an  intruding  sunbeam  peer  into  his  face  and  make 
him  turn  like  a  sleeper  in  pain;  in  autumn,  when  summer  greens  are 
forgotten  and  trees  are  a  sunset's  splendor.  I  love  this  procession  of 
changing  charm  and  meaning,  but  confess  to  the  heterodoxy  of  believing 
that  winter  trees  are  more  beautiful  to  my  eyes  than  those  of  spring, 
summer,  or  autumn. 

Tree  branches  are  works  of  God's  art  than  which  even  that  Chief 
Artist  has  done  nothing  lovelier,  save  only  the  face  in  child  or  woman. 
All  this  beauty  is  lost  in  summer,  like  a  woman's  face  hid  under  a 
mourning  veil.  Than  the  tracery  of  elm  twigs  at  the  ends  of  curved 
branches  nothing  could  be  more  poetical.  Think  it  not  strange  that 
Turner  and  Ruskin  should  love  trees  to  rapture;  for  in  all  the  woods  is 
not  one  positively  ungraceful  tree  The  snarly  gnarliness  of  certain 
oaks  minds  a  man  of  how  true  might  grows  when  whipped  with  furious 

42 


DESOLATE 


tempest;  but  they  are  far  from 
being  unlovely.  They  mind  me 
of  "Bob,  Son  of  Battle."  They 
are  in  battle  gusto  and  temper, 
and  love  to  fisticuff  with  storm 
winds. 

I  do  not  well  know  the  com- 
mercial uses  of  trees,  nor  care 
to.  I  know  their  character 
product,  which  is  more  to  my 
purpose,  for  I  am  not  commer- 
cial; but  with  character  I  have 
good  need  for  forming  comrade- 
ship. Winter  trees  mean  legiti- 
mate strife  Not  the  conten- 
tion of  the  snarly  and  truculent, 
not  the  tit-for-tat  of  the  ruffian 
who  whips  out  sword  and  plies 
it  at  a  word,  but  the  battle 
method,  which  character  never  I 
ceases  to  need;  the  battle  that  ?» 


BIRCH-TREES 
45 


makes  men  and  trees.  War  is  an  ingredient  of  souls,  if  souls  are  to 
come  to  manhood.  Every  winter  tree  is  like  a  man  on  guard  at  a 
dangerous  post  No  wind  goes  by,  however  sedate  and  conciliatory,  that 
the  tree  does  not  fling  out  naked  arms  of  angry  might  before  his  face 
and  cry  surlily,  "Halt,  who  goes  there?"  and  then  the  battle  is  fierce  as 
a  Scotch  clansman's  onset.  Winter  trees  make  me  proud  of  their  grave 
and  reasonable  pugnacity. 

In  winter  is  the  time  when  most  people  get  acquainted,  I  think. 
The  long  evenings,  and  the  shut-in  firelight  are  conciliatory  to  friend- 
ship and  made  for  confidences.  So  it  is  natural  in  winter  to  grow 
confidential  with  the  trees.  They  then  reveal  their  secret.  Surly  as 
they  look,  you  will  not  find  them  so  if  you  will  be  companionable.  Then 
go  out  of  town  (trees  stay  in  town  because  they  are  galley  slaves 
chained  there).  Go  into  the  empty  forest  where  a  river  runs  (if  Provi- 
dence favor  you  so  highly),  and  spend  a  day  there,  building  a  fire  on 
the  sheltered  side  of  some  bank  where  the  smoke  curls  on  you,  and  the 
delicious  odors  of  the  wood  exhale,  and  the  flame  dances  in  the  twist- 
ing winds  Let  the  day  be  gray.  Cloudy  days  are  the  appropriate  days 
for  making  friendship  with  the  trees.  On  open  days  the  sky  is  too  high, 
too  illuminated,  there  is  no  background  for  the  trees;  and  besides  the 
sunlight  makes  shadow  and  gives  wrong  impression  of  twig,  bark,  and 
limb  The  artists  in  their  studios  shut  sunlight  out.  We  who  love  the 
trees  must  be  as  wise  as  they.  When  the  gray  clouds  are  just  above 
the  tree  tops,  it  is  as  if  you  looked  at  every  tree  against  a  background 
of  gray  granite.  A  tree  has  its  chance  to  declare  itself  as  in  a  confes- 
sional. There  is  no  shadow ;  and  no  light  flames  with  its  torch  to  make 
wrong  proportion,  but  it  is  as  if  twilight  lit  your  lamp  for  you.  On  such 
a  day,  wander,  lover-like,  among  the  trees,  and  they  will  be  confidential 
with  you  like  women  talking  of  their  lovers.  Give  me  a  gray  day  with 
its  all-day  twilight,  and  the  naked  might  of  forest,  and  I  will  not  envy 
kings  their  coronation. 

A  beech-tree  is  a  picture.  In  the  winter  its  sagging  branches  with 
their  gray-brown  leaves  hanging  shiveringly,  so  wizen  and  little,  like  a 
withered  old  man,  and  making  their  pitiful  appeal  as  winds  shiver  by; 
and  its  trunk  like  a  pillar  of  dusk  to  hold  the  porch  of  the  evening  up. 
Friend,  if  you  do  not  know  the  beech-trees,  you.  have  one  acquaintance- 
ship to  contract  wnich  will  do  your  life  good.  In  autumn  there  is  a 
harvest  sunlight  on  the  beech  leaves  very  fair  to  see,  but  after  all  the 
beech  trunk  is  the  tree's  treasure.  I  never  pass  a  beech  without  a 

46 


BEECH-TREES 


caress,  for  it  is  carven  into 
hundreds  of  hundreds  of 
cameos  so  lovely  as  that 
they  might  each  be  a  seal 
for  an  artist's  ring  and 
carven  by  Nassaro  in  the 
days  when  his  eyesight  and 
artist's  instinct  were  perfec 
tion  This  picture  as  you 
see  it  is  a  hint  only,  for 
every  beech  trunk  has  its 
own  wealth  of  cameos. 
And  you  may  use  many  a 
daylight  looking  over  their 
patterns,  just  as  you  look 
over  the  precious  stones 


in   a   cabinet,  without  any  sense  of  weariness  or 
repetition. 

A  hackberry  is  a  beautiful  trunk  This  one  is 
a  picture  taken  from  my  farm,  though  truth  to  say 
it  is  the  most  beautiful  hackberry  bole  I  have  ever 
seen.  Deep  corrugations,  as  if  sculptured  by  some 
genius  And  indeed,  so  it  was;  for  this  genius 
sculptor  was  God  He  is  painter,  poet,  landscape- 
gardener,  botanist,  lover  of  flowers,  keeper  of  birds, 


architect  of  mountains  and  stars,  and  sculptor 
who  fashions  rocks,  river  beds,  and  sea  cliffs,  and 
tree  branches  and  cloud  landscapes  into  artistic 
and  unfathomable  loveliness.  Each  thing  I  see 
him  make  seems  his  masterpiece,  though  I  know 
it  is  not  that  he  has  done  above  the  ordinary  for 
him,  but  that  I  am  filled  with  his  glory  of  doing, 
until  1  can  contain  no  more,  even  as  the  sea's 
channels  can  contain  no  more  oceans. 

A  walnut-tree  is  very  beautiful.  Its  corruga- 
tions of  bark,  dark  almost  to  blackness,  are  always 
possessed  of  witchery  to  my  eyes.  I  see  through 
the  tree  as  if  it  were  dusky  amber,  the  black 
tawniness  of  walnut  wood.  No  wonder  that 
through  centuries  walnut  has  been  favored  wood; 
for  who  that  has  eyes  to  see  but  must  love  it? 
But  walnut  is  never  beautiful  by  the  skill  of  man, 
be  that  skill  however  great,  as  when  it  stands 
solitary  on  the  green  woodland  background  of  a 
hillside,  and  I  seem  to  see  through  the  graven 
rind  its  wine- dregs  of  wood,  and  feel  its  beauty  as 
I  do  the  beauty  of  the  dawn. 

In  winter,  wild  crab-trees  are  strong  as 
strength.  Their  trunks  are  usually  twisted  as  if 
some  storm  had  wrenched  them  with  violent  and 
outrageous  hands,  but  the  virile  tree  refused  to  be 
twisted  down,  and  wears  its  signs  of  struggle  and 
survival  on  its  front  like  scars  on  a  soldier's  fore- 
head. Why,  a  Greek  wrestler's  sinewy  arm  and 
leg  carved  in  bronze  are  not  to  my  eyes  so  hercu- 
lean and  fascinating  as  a  crab-apple  trunk  seen 
under  a  winter's  gray  sky.  When  spring  comes 
and  this  bronze  statue  flashes  into  flower  and 
perfume  such  as  even  spring  with  her  bewildering 
riches  of  such,  has  only  few  of, —  I  do  not  thrill 
to  that  exotic  loveliness  of  bloom  as  I  do  to  the 
sheer  bronze  of  the  sinewy  trunk,  standing  knee- 
deep  in  winter's  snows. 

A  soft  maple  is  more  beautiful  in  bark  than 
50 


I  \ 


mSjIm 

A   WALNUT 


the  sugar-tree,  though  its  autumn 
foliage  lacks  the  wealth  of  glory  of 
the  sugar-maple;  but  the  bark, 
specially  of  the  branches,  of  a  soft 
maple  is  something  fine  as  an 
etching,  and  to  use  the  exquisite, 
exact,  and  poetical  eyesight  of 
MAPLE  "Gert  Jan  Ridd"  (than  whom, 

none,  not  even  Ruskin,  sees  nature  with  surer  fidelity),  is  "like  the  bottom 
of  a  red  doe's  foot."  I  can  not  speak  of  the  maple  bark  to  effect,  nor  can 
it  be  photographed,  nor  painted,  but  I  love  to  look  on  its  finished  beauty 
by  the  hour,  and  hold  my  hand  on  its  faint  flame-color  as  if  I  were 
warmed  thereby.  I  make  mention  of  this  delicate  bark,  if  haply  I  may 
make  more  than  myself  lovers  of  this  dainty  doing  of  Nature's  leisure 


And  the  elm-tree  is  always  bewitching.  In  summer,  when  you  can 
tell  this  tree  far  as  you  can  catch  the  contour  across  the  fields  by  the 
grace  of  its  pose,  and  its  rhythmic  swaying  of  branches  as  keeping  time 
to  music  we  do  not  hear,— in  winter  the  tree  has  its  winter  array  No 
tree  in  our  woods  has  the  beautiful  network  of  branches  the  elm  has. 
Flung  on  the  snow  or  seen  against  the  blue  sky  or  gray,  it  is  as  graceful 
as  any  tree  that  spreads  under  the  sky.  Every  branch  has  its  own 
household  of  tracery  and  delicacies  of  invention,  for  you  shall  find  the 
unexpected  in  the  elm-tree's  goings.  No  palm  branch  waved  at  temple 
or  at  triumph,  is  fair  as  an  elm  branch.  You  can  feast  your  eyes  on  it 
as  on  the  traceries  of  a  frosty  window-pane.  To  try  to  wrestle  an  elm- 
tree  down  (despite  its  beauty,  for  beauty  and  virility  do  not  often  coin- 
cide), seems  something  the  storm-winds  of  summer  or  winter  do  not 
have  audacity  to  attempt.  Elms  have  a  firmer  hold  on  the  earth  than 
an  oak.  They  dig  for  rootage  deep  and  far.  They  pre-empt  the  land 
where  they  sink  their  anchorage  of  roots.  I  do  not  recall  to  have  seen 
an  elm-tree  uprooted  by  tempests,  though  I  have  seen  tall  pine-trees 
fallen  like  dead  soldiers,  and  oaks  lying,  half-fallen  or  wholly,  like  a  man 
sorely  wounded;  but  elms  have  a  tenacity  of  fiber  and  a  sagacity  in 
ramification  of  roots  which  all  but  defy  storm-winds.  Those  who 
would  kill  an  elm,  girdle  it,  though  I  resent  their  cowardly  practice.  It 
seems  so  dastardly  to  open  the  veins  of  a  man  you  have  not  the  courage 
to  face  nor  the  force  to  kill.  The  Cambridge  elm,  with  its  glory  of 
history  seen  through  its  leaves  and  sitting  beneath  its  shadow,  is  scarcely 
so  engaging  as  the  elms  of  the  ordinary  forest;  for  they  are  so  beautiful 
as  to  need  no  wealth  of  historical  association  to  make  them  fair. 

The  bark  of  elms,  in  corrugation  and  in  tint,  is  enough  like  the  ruts 
of  dry  country  roads  to  be  accused  of  plagiarism.  Who  knows  but  the 
elm  has  wrapped  about  him  a  cloak  worn  by  dusty  summer?  There  is 
in  any  case  a  dusty-road  look  to  his  garments,  for  which  he  must  be 
held  to  account.  I  like  the  fit  and  tone  of  his  garment. 

The  oak-tree  has  the  allegiancy  of  the  centuries;  for  beneath  its 
shadows  the  Druids  worshiped  and  built  altars,  as  if  it  were  half-deity, 
or  more.  Words  are  weak  as  tears  when  they  essay  to  tell  an  oak- 
tree's  epic.  Bashan  was  land  of  oaks  as  Lebanon  was  land  of  cedars 
but  oaks  are  freesoilers.  They  live  across  the  world  They  voyage  to 
all  shores,  and  stand  ready  to  greet  the  colonist  when  he  sets  foot  upon 
the  strand.  They  met  the  Puritans,  and  DeSoto  and  Coronado,  and 
gave  them  welcome.  Great  ships  have  been  debtors  to  them  for  hulls, 

52 


huge  to  withstand  tempests;  kings  have  wainscoated  their  palace  walls 
with  these  exquisitely  striated  woods ;  and  pictures  that  were  priceless 
have  been  framed  in  their  tawny  loveliness.  Why,  no  picture  can  be 
more  beautiful  than  the  graining  of  oak.  To  place  it  on  a  floor  is  a 
sin;  for  it  is  like  walking  on  a  picture:  but  to  wainscoat  stately  rooms 
with  it,  and  swing  its  perpetual  beauty  in  doors  to  halls  of  festival,  and 
to  build  mantels  and  line  ceilings, — that  is  just  and  legitimate  In 
seeing  a  winter  oak  you  see  all  of  the  fine  lines  drawn  by  the  graver's 
tool  of  the  great  God,  who  has  time  off  to  spend  in  making  the  oak  as 
beautiful  as  inlaid  work  of  pearl  and  onyx.  And  the  great  limbs  billow 
out  shaggy  and  fierce,  and  their  photogravure  is  something  to  dream  of 
by  night.  I  know  a  nook  near  Cawker  City,  Kansas,  a  peninsula  which 
is  almost  an  island  by  the  tortuous  winding  of  what  used  to  be  a  stream 
in  those  days  when  the  rains  drained  them  into  stream-beds  rather  than 
sinking  into  tilled  fields;  and  here  in  a  country  almost  devoid  of  trees, 
is  a  bur-oak  forest  where  great  oaks  grow,  some  of  which  fling  shadows 
seventy  feet  in  diameter,  and  under  whose  shade  a  caravan  might  rest 
under  shadows  so  dense  no  ray  of  sunlight  could  peer  through.  This 
oak-grove  is  worth  making  a  pilgrimage  to  see;  for  I  have  not  often 
seen  its  equal  anywhere  across  this  continent.  When  winter  winds 
of  might  charge  down  on  the  forest,  then  an  oak-tree  laughs  like  a 
lover,  and  shoots  out  his  hundred  furious  fists  until  the  storm-winds 
are  abashed.  None  must  think  to  commiserate  this  battling  giant. 
Ulysses  loved  the  battle  of  warring  Trojans  and  stormy  seas,  but  not 
more  than  the  oak-tree  loves  its  conflict.  These  winter  onsets  are 
better  to  him  than  dew,  or  rain,  or  gentle  spring  zephyrs.  Through  all 
his  huge  trunk,  fury  runs.  He  drinks  wine  pressed  from  the  grapes  of 
wrath ;  and  his  huge  arms  hammer  at  the  wind ,  and  like  the  sound  of 
winds  from  the  seas  in  the  rigging  of  the  ships,  so  shrills  the  wind 
through  the  branches  of  this  oaken  harp.  There  is  joy  to  the  oak-trees 
•when  storm-winds  blow. 

Cottonwoods  have  a  fan-top  spread  out  in  bare  wantonness  as  if  to 
catch  every  wind  that  passed  that  way.  Not  summer  is  in  winter 
cottonwoods;  for  their  summer  minstrelsy  is  as  rainfall  in  the  dusk  of 
evenings;  but  exposing  wide  expanse  of  branches  to  the  winds,  winter 
cottonwoods  make  grave  and  noble  music.  I  think  it  strange  how 
.seldom  these  winter  trees  have  broken  branches  lying  beneath  them ;  in 
other  words,  with  what  uniformity  they  conquer  the  winds.  You  would 
not  think  those  long,  slender  branches,  seemingly  so  disqualified  to 

55 


ff 

il 


*zr 


withstand  long  months  of  sleep- 
less conflict,  are  in  fact  quite 
admirably  qualified.  These 
wrestlings  do  them  good.  Brown- 
ing was  right  when  he  lets  old 
rabbi  Ben  Ezra  say, 

"  Then,  welcome  each  rebuff 

That  turns  earth's  smoothness  rough 
Each  sting  that  bids  nor  sit  nor  stand. 

but  go  ' 

Be  our  joys  three-parts  pain  ! 
Strive,  and  hold  cheap  the  strain: 
Leam,  nor  account  the  pang:   dare, 
never  grudge  the  throe  !" 

The  hue  of  the  hacked,  horny 
rind  of  the  cottonwood  trunk 
near  its  base  is  all  but  black. 
Some  I  have  seen  which  were 
nothing  less,  while  their  branches 
are  light  to  whiteness,  a  green- 
ish silver,  in  fact;  but  a  lamp 
light  with  gentle  glow  to  the  eyes 
that  love  to  linger  on  them,  so 
that  as  seen  in  winter  across  a 
field  they  stand  white  as  wearing 
light  as  a  garment,  and  make  all 
trees  about  them  to  appear  as 


A  WINTER  COTTONWOOD 
56 


under  a  cloud,  while  only  the  cottonwoods  stood  in  the  sunlight.  They 
make  the  dawn  and  summer  to  rise  upon  me  whenever  I  cast  my  eyes 
their  way,  which  is  so  often  as  to  preclude  enumerations.  Cottonwoods 
under  cloud  or  light  refuse  to  forget  the  sunlight.  I  think  they  remem- 
ber the  sunny  Kansas  plains  where  they  are  often  the  sole  tree  occu- 
pants of  wide  wildernesses  of  grass.  I  can  not  be  quit  of  the  radiancy 
of  these  trees,  standing  tall,  and  with  what  seems  a  promise  of  sun- 
shine for  all  the  woods.  They  are  the  true  light-bearers.  Because  of 
this  peculiarity  cottonwoods  in  winter  days  have  a  surprise  about  them 
as  though  they  had  recently  hailed  from  some  land  of  delight,  and  kept 
glad  memories  always  smiling  in  their  looks.  I  would  it  lay  in  me  to 
get  people  to  watch  the  cottonwoods  in  winter  as  to  listen  to  them  in 
summer.  I  know  not  which  mood  entices  my  spirit  the  more.  In 
summer  when  all  is  laughter  the  cottonwoods  weep;  in  winter  when  all 
things  else  are  sad  or  angry,  cottonwoods  are  laughing  like  a  holiday. 
They  are  the  contradictions  of  the  year;  and  may  their  beauty  never 
know  a  twilight ! 

Willows  always  interest  me.  They  are  a  fragile  wood,  but  who 
would  think  so  to  see  them  travel  along  all  shores  ?  They  are  like  frail 
men,  who  with  a  body  as  weak  as  that  of  William  the  Third  do  such 
herculean  labor  as  would  incline  you  to  think  old  Samson  hugged  at  the 
temple's  pillars.  Weakness  hath  its  own  puissance.  Their  sweet  pen- 
siveness,  their  graceful  droop  along  every  ravine,  saying  as  plainly  as 
speech  can  say,  "Where  I  throw  my  shadow  you  shall  find  a  living 
well;"  their  dainty  lance-leaves,  among  the  earliest  greenery  of  spring, 
and  sometimes  among  the  latest  greenery  of  autumn,  and  in  whose 
shadows  summer  winds  seem  prone  to  fall  asleep  or  loiter  idly;  their 
dainty  yellow  of  foliage  of  the  autumntime,  and  their  struggle  with  the 
winter's  wind  without  complaint,  and  with  strange  career  of  victory,  are 
things  which  should  forever  endear  the  willow  to  the  lover  of  God's 
Out-of-Doors. 

A  willow  never  stands  erect.  Either  it  can  not  or  will  not.  I  incline 
to  the  belief  that  the  latter  is  the  correct  view.  As  in  the  picture, 
willows  lean  at  an  easy  angle  as  in  pensive  mood.  They  dream,  may- 
hap, upon  the  da>s  that  are  no  more. 

' '  0,  those  old  days  !     Those  near  yet  far  off  days  ! 
Paged  with  dear  legends,  winsome  with  sweet  ways! 
When  spendthrift  hearts  all  went  a-gypsying: 
Cared  naught  for  form  or  statute  laws  or  king, 
But  lived  in  melodies.'" 
57 


Mayhap,  it  Is  Of  these  days  the  willows 
dream,  but  dream  they  do,  summer  or 
winter  They  have  a  touch  of  pathos 
in  them  evermore.  The  bark  is  like  to 
an  elm  so  as  to  be  easily  mistaken  for 
it,  and  ashy- red  in  hue.  These  of  the 
picture  are  taken  from  "my  farm"  in 
the  ravine  I  set  such  store  by,  and 
where  in  springtime  the  waters  will  pour 
about  them  to  their  knees;  and  they 
know  it!  They  love  that  knee -deep 
wading  like  little  boys.  In  spring,  with 
their  flash  of  early  green,  or  in  sum- 
mer, with  half  slumber,  and  their 
pensive  droop  of  leaf  and  branch  and 
trunk — well,  God  did  certainly  deal  ten- 
derly with  the  willows,  and  made  them 
very  fair ! 

The  shell-bark  hickory  is  the  sur- 
liest seeming  tree  in  the  wood,  save 
only  the  honey-locust,  which  is  vindic- 
tive and  humanity-hating  as  Timon  of 
Athens,  though  when  the  fair  summer 
is  blooming  this  misanthropic  tree 
flashes  out  in  throngs  of  tiny  leaves 
almost  as  exquisite  as  ferns,  and  much 
after  their  likeness.  Not  any  tree  has 
any  more  beautiful  leaves  than  a  thorny 
locust,  so  man-hating  and  beast-hating, 
that  even  the  merry  squirrel  can  not 
climb  it,  but  in  which  birds  build  nests, 
as  in  a  citadel;  for  there  the  larger 
birds  can  not  come  seeking  prey,  nor 
the  wise  serpent.  This  evil,  angry 
tree  so  comes  to  serve  good  uses, 
building  with  angry  skill  a  fortress 


where  the  gentle  bh'ds  may  dwell  in 
quiet,  far  from  enemies  In  the 
winter  season,  however,  nothing  can 
be  less  propitiating  The  thorn -spines 
jag  out  in  clusters  on  every  angry  bole 
and  branch. 

But  as  I  have  said,  next  to  the 
locust  is  the  shell-bark  hickory  Sum- 
mer or  winter  it  curls  up  its  lips  like  a 
bull-cur.  As  a  child  I  used  to  be 
insulted  by  them,  though  like  crusty 
people  I  have  known,  they  would  snarl 
at  you  and  make  you  merry  at  the 
same  minute;  for  when  fall  frosts  whiten 
the  house-tops  a  little,  I  was  wont  to 
go  to  the  woods  of  the  Marais  Des 
Cygnes  and  find  a  hail  of  hickory  nuts 
slanting  to  earth;  and  I  would  make 
merry  beneath  the  branches,  getting 
oftentimes  a  sound  rap  on  the  head 
by  a  friendly  nut  on  its  way  to  the 
autumn  leaves  lying  thick  upon  the 
ground.  But  surly  the  shell-bark 
hickory  is.  Great  flakes  of  its  bark 
curling  inevitably  from  the  trunk,  as 
you  have  seen  old  shingles  curl  from 
an  ancient  roof,  dyed  black  as  darkness 
in  long  years  of  rain  and  drench  of 
summer  sun.  Surly  the  shell-barks  are, 
but  beautiful.  I  have  loved  to  love 
them  more  than  I  will  here  set  down, 
lest  some  who  read  should  think  me 
foolish;  I  pass  no  one  of  them  in  my 
wanderings  without  stopping  to  watch 
its  ill-fit  of  garments  and  truculence  of 
demeanor.  A  baby  shell-bark  is 


smooth  as  any  other  hickory, 
but  grows  not  long  till  it 
begins  to  snarl  at  passers 
by,  at  which  time  it  is  ridic- 
ulous to  me  and  makes  me 
giggle.  This  snappishness  is 
like  a  pretty  woman's  pout- 
ing, attractive  as  laughter. 
And  when  a  shell-bark  sap- 
ling is,  say,  twenty  feet  high,  I  have  seen  a  bark  which  would  suit  the 
glad  fancies  of  an  artist.  Lichens  of  select  sort  gather  on  their  curl- 
ing rinds,  yellowish  and  greenish  lichens  being  favorites,  and  when 
these  are  on  the  bark  and  out  under  winter  rains,  they  become  beauti- 
ful as  photogravures.  If  you  suppose  that,  one  shell-bark  seen,  all  are 

60 


LOCUST 


seen,  you  were  never  more  mistaken.  Each  has  its  charm  like  man 
and  woman.  There  is  no  duplicating.  God  makes  his  creations  to  be 
like  the  marked  copies  of  de  luxe  editions.  Shell-barks  are  among 
the  treasures  of  my  woods,  and  among  the  richest  riches  of  winter 
forests. 

Not  lightly  to  estimate  these  winter  riches,  I  would  profess  that  of 
all  winter  trees  the  sycamore  is  most  beautiful.  In  Indiana,  on  the 
Wabash,  they  are  at  their  kingliest  I  have  not  seen  their  equals. 
There  they  grow  stately  with  few  limbs,  and  the  sycamores  stand  pillars 
of  carven  marble.  The  sycamore  is  to  me  a  fascinating  tree  for  two 
special  reasons.  First,  where  he  lives,  and  second,  how  he  does. 
Oaks  and  elms  and  walnuts  are  like  God's  common  people — plenty  of 
them  and  everywhere.  They  grow  down  in  broad  valleys,  on  the  edge 
of  the  stream;  they  are  on  the  hillsides  climbing  the  bluffs;  they  are  on 
bluff  edges;  they  are  in  ravines  far  back  from  any  stream  where  they 
can  find  an  unpre-empted  field  for  woodland;  there  they  dig  into  the 
earth,  loam  or  clay,  rock  or  woodland.  Not  so  a  sycamore,  which  will 
not  of  its  own  accord  grow  on  hills  or  run  up  a  bank  from  a  stream. 
The  sycamore  hugs  the  water  courses.  Not,  be  it  observed,  as  the 
willow  which  grows  in  ravines,  where  waters  sometimes  run  down  in 
marshy  ground,  and  always  knee-deep  in  ravines  or  streams,  being  very 
ducks  for  loving  water;  for  sycamores  rarely  or  never  stand  in  either 
streams  or  swamp  places.  They  are  coy,  and  stand  a  few  feet  up  and 
back  from  the  river's  bank.  They  grow  where  water  stays.  You  will 
not  find  them  in  ravines  whose  custom  is  to  go  dry  in  summer.  Where 
waters  stay,  there  sycamores  stay.  These  waterways  of  the  sycamore 
are  of  singular  interest,  as  I  think  any  one  who  studies  them  will  agree. 
A  wide  valley  on  river-levels  you  will  find  thick  sown  to  sycamores 
across  its  entire  breadth,  for  here  they  reach  water.  A  stream-edge  will 
be  sentineled  with  sycamores  rooting  above  the  stream,  but  very  often 
leaning  over  the  water  so  as  to  see  their  own  faces.  Infrequently  I  have 
seen  them  on  so-called  second  bottoms,  but  as  a  very  general  rule 
where  a  bluff  begins  to  climb,  a  sycamore  refuses  to  follow.  Only  the 
other  day,  happening  to  be  on  the  railroad  that  ran  along  the  beautiful 
Gasconade,  I  watched  this  fine  power  of  selection  of  sycamores — know- 
ing what  they  want  and  getting  it.  And  I  saw  their  white  pillars  flash 
snowy  against  the  gray  skyline,  or  the  rocky  cliffs,  or  the  dim  black 
woodlands  as  they  trooped  along  the  river,  never  letting  on  they  had  a 
purpose,  but  always  having  one,  huddling  together;  for  in  this  they  are 

61 


cliqueish  folk  (a  thing  I  can  not  praise  since  it  is  quite  un-American). 
They  are,  moreover,  lovers  of  ease,  and  scarcely  working  folk;  but  brave 
aristocrats  they  are,  stately  as  Colonial  dames,  and  as  unbending  as 
royal  etiquette.  But  they  held  to  the  river  and  its  valley.  Only  once 
did  I  see  a  dwarf  on  a  hillside  not  many  feet  above  the  level  of  the  water, 
and  it  was  ashamed  and  seedy  like  a  poor  relation  and  expatriated. 
Sycamores  can  not  rough  it,  and  unless  planted  there  will  not  grow  on 
uplands,  but  when  planted  thrive  admirably.  Of  their  own  liking  they 
will  not  attempt  unaccustomed  fields.  I  have,  at  rare  intervals,  seen 
them  climb  up  a  bluff,  but  it  was  as  if  they  had  walked  there  in  their 
sleep.  The  second  strange  thing  about  sycamores  is  their  habits  of 
dress.  The  habit  of  putting  on  thick  garments,  as  other  folks  do  in  the 
cold  season  when  winds  are  keen,  and  all  agree  with  Hamlet,  "It  is  a 
nipping  and  an  eager  air,"  sycamores  will  have  nothing  of  They  don 
their  heavy  garments  in  summer,  and  strip  them  to  the  skin  in  winter. 
I  think  that  one  of  the  strangest  freaks  of  freakish  nature  Even  Indians 
are  not  so  outrageous  of  the  rights  of  winter.  What  evolutionist  (allwise 
as  they  are  and  omniscient  beyond  their  Maker),  can  explain  such  a 
performance  on  the  theory  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest?  Summer  is 
the  time  for  sycamores  and  other  people  to  strip  for  bathing  in  the 
streams,  but  winter  bathing — why,  my  friends,  the  sycamores,  you  shock 
me  and  you  make  me  shiver.  I  feel  cold  with  my  clothes  on,  and  you 
are  naked  as  Greek  wrestlers.  What  a  talent  for  individuality  of  pro- 
cedure these  sycamores  have!  We  must  allow  that  they  have  inde- 
pendency in  their  character.  In  autumn,  when  winter  throws  out  a 
premonitory  hoar  frost  to  signify  he  is  in  the  neighborhood,  then  the 
sycamores  begin  to  disrobe.  They  take  off  their  garments  by  stealth, 
as  a  maniac  does.  You  can  not,  unless  you  are  a  close  observer  and 
look  very  narrowly,  find  a  shred  of  their  bark  under  the  trees,  and  when 
they  are  done  with  their  denudation  you  will  probably  not  find  one  scrap 
of  their  garments.  Watch  them  and  see.  They  are  strange  folks.  I 
watch  them  as  if  they  were  in  politics.  Then  when  they  are  as  nude  as 
nakedness,  they  are  as  beautiful  as  morning.  Not  the  pilaster  of  a 
temple,  snow-white  under  radiant  skies  of  Italy  is  so  white  as  these 
sycamore  pillars.  They  stand  tall  as  if  they  were  hewn  from  ice-drifts, 
or  snow-drifts,  or  marble-quarries.  Sometimes,  however,  they  are  not 
snow-white,  but  a  sort  of  shaded  green,  a  flesh  green,  as  I  may  say,  for 
they  look  for  all  the  world  like  flesh,  and  stand  faint  emerald  against  the 
sky  like  a  forecast  of  spring.  But  whether  flesh  green  or  marble  white, 

62 


SYCAMORES 


they  are  bewitching  and  satisfying.  Who  knows  not  the  sycamore  is  to 
be  pitied?  He  has  missed  so  much 

"The  pillared  dusk  of  sounding  sycamores," 

of  which  the  laureate  sings,  is  not  so  beauty-burdened  as  the  stately 
temple-pillars,  lifting  taper  marble  up  as  worthy  for  some  Phidias  to 
plant  upon  their  Doric  trunks  some  stately  frieze  wrought  into  pana- 
thenaic  processions.  Who  would  have  thought  of  such  a  thing  as  a 
sycamore,  save  God  only? 

"The  birds  and  beasties  "  of  winter  woods  are  accessories  not  to  be 

forgotten  "Bare  ruined  choirs,  where  late  the  sweet  birds  sang," 
are  visible  in  plenty.  In  summer  these  nests  were  hid  from  the  eyes  "of 
the  wise  and  prudent,"  but  now  are  open  to  everybody's  gaze.  There 
is  no  secrecy.  In  the  leafless  hedgerow  is  the  thrush's  nest,  and  down 
by  the  stream  is  the  bluebird's  house,  and  the  crow's  log-house  of  knotty 
and  unworkmanlike  construction  is  seen  from  the  treetops.  Crows  are 
bold  builders.  They  haunt  treetops  as  swallows  the  eaves.  These  nests 
seem  so  ill-built  that  one  would  tumble  down  if  a  flapping  wing  of  its 
own  builder  were  to  cuff  it  unwarily,  but,  as  experience  shows,  are  so 
sturdily  constructed  that  all  the  winter's  tempests  leave  them  in  good 
repair.  These  crows  are  deceiving  folks.  We  thought  they  tumbled 
their  houses  together  in  an  unworkmanlike  fashion,  when  lo,  we  found 
they  built  against  seasons  and  naked  winters,  and  storm-wind's  brow- 
beating. And  the  crow  is  in  the- winter  woods.  His  Satanic  blackness 
glares  through  the  naked  woods,  and  makes  a  sort  of  plaintive  picture. 
He  flies  low  over  the  trees  of  winter  and  settles  often  for  caucus  or 
religious  meeting, — I  really  never  have  been  able  to  tell  which.  But  I 
am  not  his  chaplain ;  so  it  makes  not  much  matter. 

And  the  redbird  flings  himself  through  the  network  of  branches, 
like  a  firebrand  borne  by  daylight;  and  his  whistle  is  always  as  from  a 
cheery  heart.  The  cardinal  is  warming  to  the  eyes,  and  his  carelessness 
of  weather  makes  him  to  me  fraternal.  I  defy  weather,  only  asking 
that  there  be  weather.  The  kind  is  not  for  rne  to  say,  seeing  I  am  not 
the  weather  bureau;  but  some  kind  of  weather,  fair,  foul,  wintry,  windy, 
quiet;  snow,  rain,  sleet,  are  little  odds  to  me;  I  enjoy  them  all,  and  go 
out  in  one  with  the  same  delight  as  in  the  other.  Each  has  its  impact 
with  my  spirit.  The  cardinal  cheers  himself  not  with  the  hope  of  spring 
coming,  but  with  the  delight  of  winter  here.  All  seasons  make  love  to 
him  and  he  to  all  seasons ;  and  when  he  flings  his  torch  across  the  gray- 

65 


black  winter  branches,  and  flies  like  an  arrow  of  fire,  shot  by  a  hidden 
bowman,  all  the  gray  woods  are  lit  up  and  radiant 

And  the  junco  (I  call  him  so  by  sort  of  conventionality  as  a  tribute 
of  social  order,  but  call  him  by  sweet  familiarity,  the  snow-bird),  so 
I  love  him.  The  snows  and  he  blow  in  the  same  wind.  The  fiercer 
the  wind  the  more  rollicking  his  demeanor.  Storms  are  fiddle-music 
to  his  jigging  feet  Some  birds  shun  winter  and  love  summer.  A 
snowbird  shuns  summer  and  loves  winter.  He  seeks  winter  in  sum- 
mer. He  is  a  hard-weather  bird,  like  a  stormy  petrel.  Sparrows  in 
winter  cling  to  hedges  and  to  sheltered  places,  if  there  be  any;  but  snow- 
birds get  out  where  the  winds  sweep  wildest,  and  the  snow  curls  like 
white  soot,  sicked  on  by  furious  blasts.  Then  the  snowbird  revels  and 
is  glad.  How  often  I  have  watched  him  and  rejoiced  in  his  pluck! 
Such  a  little  laddie,  but  such  a  laughing  courage,  like  a  drummer  lad  in 
the  battle's  front. 

Squirrels,  rabbits,  coons,  and  sometimes  the  barking  wolf,  with  its 
wild-dog  waggishness,  cross  and  recross  these  wintry,  snowy  woods,  their 
tracks  returning  on  each  other  as  in  frantic  glee.  A  rabbit  is  a  timid 
jester,  but  loves  a  joke,  and  in  moonlight  forgets  his  fear  and  keeps 
tryst,  and  pounds  the  ground  with  his  heels  in  a  sort  of  bellicose 
hilarity.  0,  there  are  good  times  in  winter  woods — just  as  good  times 
were  had  in  the  old  pioneer  days,  with  sleigh  rides,  and  bussing-bees, 
and  spellings-down.  With  trees  in  battle,  birds  and  beasts  making 
merry  in  the  storm,  you  will  do  well  to  call  winter  a  summer  of 
delight. 

When  slow  mists  make  tree  trunk  and  branch  a  sheet  of  ice,  and 
when  rain  comes  after  mists  and  thickens  the  ice  into  a  sword-sheath 
thickness,  and  trees  stand  against  the  light  armed  in  silver,  then  might 
a  dumb  man  sing  for  joy.  Watch  this  glow  against  the  sun,  and  hear 
this  crash  of  battle-hour  when  their  naked  sword-blades  smite  together 
in  indignant  warfare,  see  them  clad  in  "light  as  in  a  garment,"  and  you 
wonder  what  God  does  not  think  of.  What  God  does  not  think  of  none 
need  desire  to  invent.  These  icy  armors  are  brilliant  as  any  old-time 
armorer  could  make  of  silver,  and  this  is  a  world  lit  with  silver,  green, 
and  blood,  and  crossed  with  march  of  winds,  and  the  tangle  of  branches, 
and  the  silver  bird's  nests,  and  cornfields  standing  erect  as  soldiers  on 
duty  with  silver  plumes,  and  the  wide-armed  oak  harnessed  in  silver,  but 
nothing  daunted.  When  sleets  are  on,  the  world  is  transfigured  and  the 
heart  rejoices  above  the  spring.  Or  when  snows  stream  over  the  skies 

66 


and  smoke  through  the  tree  tops  and  make  all  the  weeds  and  bushes 
stoop  under  their  weight  of  whiteness,  and  the  boughs  of  the  forest  droop 
under  their  weights  of  snow  as  under  weights  of  superabundant  fruitage, 
and  the  lanes  of  the  woods  are  dusk  at  noon  when  the  snows  come  in 
silence,  but  with  the  dim  lights  of  sunsets  and  after,  and  earth  seems  a 
memory,  so  far  off  it  feels,  then  the  woods  are  bewilderments.  They 
are  not  kin  to  what  we  had  known  them.  We  could  not  recognize  these 
as  the  woodland  ways  our  fond  feet  had  trodden  so  often  All  is  new 
and  strange,  and  we  wander  as  those  who  have  set  foot  on  shores  undis- 
covered till  now.  When  snows  dim  all  the  sky  and  hide  far  and  near  in 
fogbanks  of  white  wonder,  then,  friend,  go  into  the  woods  and  see  them 
keep  tryst  with  the  snows  and  keep  thy  lips  closed  as  in  inaudible  prayer, 
and  walk  quietly  (for  you  can  do  no  other  when  snows  carpet  the  dead 
leaves),  and  have  a  hush  of  spirit  before  God  as  if  you  walked  cathedral 
solitudes.  And  when  bitter-sweet 

"Hangs  its  tufts  of  crimson  berries" 

and  buckberries  wear  their  surly  reds,  and  the  red-oaks  hold  their  leaves 
and  shiver  night  and  day  as  with  perpetual  ague ;  and  when  the  storms 
roar  and  are  angry,  and  the  trees  rush  out  with  ecstasy  of  gladness  to 
give  battle  to  the  winds;  then  winter  trees  are  glorious,  and  I  watch  them, 
and  fellowship  with  them,  and  bless  my  God  I  live  where  winter  comes, 
and  where  deciduous  trees  are  plentiful,  and  where  simple  beauty  gives 
way  betimes  to  massive,  yet  beautiful  might  Then  commend  me  to 
the  battle  and  fury  and  anthems  of  the  winter  trees. 


THROUGH   THE  PINE  WOODS 
67 


GOLDEN-ROD 


GOLDEN-ROD 


'OBODY  has  been  considerate  enough  of  a 
wise  curiosity  to  tell  us  why  in  autumn  the 
purples  and  yellows  are  the  lavish  colors.  I 
would  thank  some  of  the  knowing  for  such 
item  of  information.  But  certain  I  am  that 
the  autumn  flowers  riot  in  yellow  hues.  They 
have  caught  the  sun  in  their  heart  through 
all  the  golden  summer, — have  caught  every 
beam  coming  their  way  and  held  each  as  the 
naiads  held  fair  Hylas  what  time  he  bathed 
him  in  Scamander,  while  his 
purple  chlamys  lay  upon  the 
shore.  The  autumn  flowers 
seem  never  to  forget  a  syllable 
of  sunlight  any  more  than  love 
forgets  a  syllable  of  wooing;  and  in  the 
Fall  in  blooming  they  rehearse  all 
they  have  heard,  as  lovers  tell 

each  other  all  the  sweet  words  the  other  had  written 

or  said,  while  each  listening  says,  "Did  I  say  that? 

and  when?  and  you  remembered?" — and  then  they 

kiss  each  other  on  the  lips.     So  the  sunflowers  and 

black- eyed  susans  and  the  golden-rods  save  up  and 

rehearse  the  sunshine  of  the  year.     Bless  them  for  * 

their  tenacious  memories. 

Golden-rod   may  be   deleterious   to   hay  fever 

votaries,  but  is  sympathetic  and  friendly  to  those 

of  us  who  indulge  in  no  such  lachrymose  luxury. 

Well  people   have  some   rights,  though   they  are 

73 


stem 


seldom  considered.  Some  slight  consideration 
should  be  shown  the  healthy,  and  their  wishes  con- 
sulted at  far-removed  nows  and  thens.  The  golden- 
rod  is  one  of  my  delights.  From  the  time  the  first 
slender  spike  flashes  its  light  upon  the  eyes  to  the 
last  burnt-out  splendor  drooping  shamed  upon  its 
,  I  keep  them  in  my  study.  I  love  their  warm 
light — their  laughter  in  bloom  (for  so  their 
glow  impresses  me).  I  do  not  feel  obligated 
to  tell  why  I  love  what  I  love,  and  if  pressed 
by  some  purist,  I  will  not,  but  if  let  alone  will 
probably  disclose  the  secret  of  my  passion. 

I  love  golden-rod  because  there  is  plenty  of 
it,  and  1  like  plentiful  things;  hence,  children, 
men,  women,  trees,  stars,  common-place  things 
and  people  are  dear  to  me.  Golden-rod 
blooms  mainly  in  flocks,  as  pigeons  fly,  and  in 
many  flocks,  along  fences,  in  pastures,  by 
woods,  in  the  woods,  along  highways  (thank 
them  for  that  courtesy).  They  are  as  the 
poet  who  pipes  as  the  hedge  sparrow  does, 

"/  build  my  house  by  the  side  of  the  road." 
Where  the  dust  clouds  and  chokes  you  on 
the  long  sun-burnt  road,  golden-rod  will  toss  out 
its  yellow  light  like  some  one  you  love  looking 
at    you    through    an    open   window. 
Golden-rod    grows    all    across    our 
America,  in  the  north  and  south,  in 
Maine  and  California.     It  is  a  hardy 
traveler.         It    dogs    man's    steps. 
Trailing    arbutus    grows     in 
New  England  and  the  north- 


-  --- 

•Jff: 


east,  but  comes  not  out  west  (shame  on 
the  aristocracy  of    this  sweet   prisoner   of 
humility);    and  the  dumb   fox-glove   is  a  resident 
only  in  limited  quarters;  but  golden-rod  is  a  beautiful 
democrat,  and  comes  wherever  we  are,  and  makes 
glad  at  our  door,  and  kindles  its  wonderment  of  color 
to  the  whole  continent's  delight.     Golden-rod  is  the 
common  folk's  flower,  like  the  hollyhock  and   old- 
fashioned  roses  and  almost  forgotten  four  o 'clocks. 
There  is  rare  grace  in  a  frond  of  the  golden-rod. 
Did  you  ever  notice  that?      Did  you  ever  see  a 
gawky   golden-rod?      I    never   have.      Its   spike   of 
flowers  leaning  a  little  in  half  bashfulness,  though 
standing  so  tall  and  stately, — this  pose  is  itself  a 
picture.     I  do  wonder  if  these  smiling  lovelinesses 
are  sitting  for  their  pictures?     I  will  not  believe 
so,  for  I  think  them  too  frank  by  odds  to  be 
dramatic.     But  if  you  care  to  sketch  the  golden-     41 
rod,  hit  or  miss,  you  will  be  impressed  by  the       / 
continuity    of    gracefulness.        What    glorious     * ; 
golden-rod  I  have  gathered  in  Connecticut,  near 
beautiful  Canaan,  where  the  hills  are  sponges  which 
squeeze  out  springs  and  rivulets  and  rushing  streams, 
and  where  at  night  you  can  •  hear  the  dim  calling  of 
the  waterfalls   through  the   cloudy  darkness  where 
the  stream  tumbles  down  a  bank  in  its  hurry  to  reach 
the  Housatonic;  and  what  torches  have  I  seen  and 
gathered  in  the  White  Mountains  in  sight  of  Mount 
Washington!     I  do  believe  that  had  I  carried  them 
in  the  dark  for  a  torch  they  would  have  lit  the  way 
like  a  flaming  pine  knot;  but  they  have  lit  my 


\ 


heart  on  many  a  dark  night  in  winter,  when  the  wind  whistled  and 
shivered,  and  the  shutters  slammed  against  the  house  in  dismal  din. 
And  1  have  gathered  golden-rod  on  the  heights  of  Quebec,  hard  by 
where  brave  Wolfe  fell,  and  down  the  St.  Lawrence  toward  the  northern 
sea,  and  on  Mt.  Desert  Island,  neighboring  the  rocky  cliffs  and  melan- 
choly pines,  and  beside  beautiful  Champlain  and  back  in  the  Adiron- 
dacks  where  the  world  seemed  removed  across  some  wide,. wide  sea,  and 
in  the  Rockies  where  the  continent  billowed  toward  the  skies,  and  the 
crest  forgot  to  sink,  and  along  the  Great  Lakes  where  the  billows  call 
like  a  sea,  and  on  the  fringe  of  the  great  desert  with  its  parched  lips  and 
cheeks  where  fever  burns  forever,  and  along  the  Wabash  with  its  stately 
tulip-trees  and  sycamores,  beautiful  as  the  pillars  of  the  Parthenon,  and 
along  the  Sacramento  as  it  widens  seaward,  beside  the  Potomac  as  it 
stops  a  moment  tenderly  to  lave  the  bank  on  whose  sloping  side  Wash- 
ington lies  buried,  and  on  the  Hudson  when  the  Palisades  were  all  in 
conflagration  in  autumn  days,  and  on  my  own  beloved  prairies  stretching 
mile  on  mile  through  Indian  summer  haze — so  widely  have  I  gathered 
the  golden-rod,  and  reverently  hope  I  may  be  commissioned  to  gather 
its  golden  sprays  in  heaven ;  so  shall  I  feel  quite  at  home. 


I  GO  A-FISHING 


I  GO  A- FISHING 


0  tell  the  truth,  scarcely  a  fisherman's  bent  as 
you  will  suggest,  I  am  an  ill  fisherman.     I  would 
not  decoy  some  ardent  lover  of  rod  and  line  to 
read  these  inconsequent  lines,  thinking  I  was 
piscatorial  artist,  or  that  I  had  fast  friendship 
*    with  our  good  friend,  quaint  and  gentle,   Ike 
Walton.     We  are  bare  acquaintances.     I  met 
him  once,  once  only,  along  the  river  Dove  tak- 
'"***""  ing  a  grayling  from  his  hook,  and  so  not  seeing 

me,  for  so  true  a  fisherman  was  always  more 
engrossed  with  fish  than  men  (nor  do  I  blame 

him);  and  I  was  only  wandering  along  the  stream  watching  the  shadows 
on  the  quiet  water  and  the  pools  where  sunlight  came  and  staid  as  taking 
a  whole  day  of  holiday.  No,  I  know  as  little  about  fishing  as  about 
botany.  I  know  not  what  sort  of  bait  catches  what  sort  of  fish.  I 
seldom  get  a  nibble,  and  much  more  rarely  get  a  fish,  though  Provi- 
dence knows  I  wish  the  fish  knew  how  safe  it  is  to  intrust  themselves  to 
my  hook,  for  I  throw  back  into  the  stream,  with  scant  reluctance,  the 
fish  I  catch.  I  am  much  more  pious  and  tender-hearted  than  your  piety- 
professing  fisherman,  who,  while  he  talks  gently  of  the  "gentle  art,"  kills 
whom  he  surprises,  like  any  other  bandit,  and  lays  snares  like  an  assas- 
sin, and  fresh  in  iniquity  says  his  prayers  like  a  murderer  making  the 
sign  of  the  cross  above  the  corpse  he  has  made.  No,  I  never  knew 
•enough,  or  so  little,  I  know  not  which,  as  to  succeed  in  catching  fish, 
yet  I  say  boldly,  though  as  I  hope  with  modesty,  that  I  can  throw  a  line 
into  the  water  and  let  it  stay  there  with  a  degree  of  resolution  worthy  of 
a  French  cavalier  of  the  reign  of  Louis  the  Saint.  To  state  the  facts 
irankly,  as  becometh  a  Christian,  I,  having  had  many  friends  who  were 

81 


valorous  fishermen,  am  persuaded  that  it  is  next  door  to  an  impossibility 
to  be  a  chronic  fisherman  and  not  become  a  chronic  hyperbolist  (I  use 
this  term  out  of  my  love  for  my  fishermen  friends,  and  my  disinclina- 
tion to  use  the  more  ordinary  and  direct  word  which  differs  in  no  slight- 
est shade  of  meaning.  I  refer  to  the  little  radical  among  the  words 
which  is  pronounced  liar).  There  must  be  some  men  of  unimpaired 
virtue  (1  do  not  speak  this  in  any  haughty  spirit).  Truthfulness,  like 
persecuted  goodness,  must  have  some  fortress  to  which  to  retreat ;  and 
in  claiming  to  be  an  unsuccessful  fisherman  it  occurs  to  me  that  it  has 
become  apparent  that  I  am  this  rocky  fortress  of  incorrupted  truth. 
Fish  and  men,  specially  the  fish,  may  depend  on  me,  I  absolutely  re- 
fuse to  prevaricate  unless  it  be  entirely  convenient. 

If  I  have  been  digging  for  morals  when  I  should  have  been  digging 
bait  and  baiting  my  hook,  I  beg  to  suggest  I  have  been  decoyed  to  it 
by  the  moralizing  moods  of  the  professional  fisherman.  He  always  acts 
as  if  he  fished  from  the  same  motive  as  he  says  his  prayers,  namely, 
piety ;  though  I  for  my  part  think  it  a  slimy  trick  to  hide  play  under  the 
cloud  of  devotion.  If  men  will  fish  let  them  not  preach  and  attempt  to 
persuade  others  they  are  doing  it  as  an  act  of  religion.  To  be  Shake- 
spearean (a  manner  quite  foreign  to  me),  "  Methinks  they  do  profess  too 
much."  I  knew  a  truthful  fisherman  once  (he  is  dead);  and  I  feel 
honor  bound  to  prepare  him  an  epitaph,  though  not  at  this  time.  But  a 
truthful  fisherman  has  a  right  to  pass  into  the  list  of  heroes  who  over- 
bore environment  and  gave  the  lie  to  centuries  of  precedent. 

I  have  some  friends,  good  men  and  true  at  home  and  in  business, 
but  who  seem  to  cast  from  them  all  their  fine  ethical  distinctions  so 
soon  as  they  get  a  fish  pole  in  their  hands ;  and  when  they  have  donned 
fisherman's  boots  and  have  hold  on  a  reel,  then  farewell,  beautiful  truth. 
As  soon  as  they  smell  fish  their  truthfulness  evaporates,  or  at  all  events 
disappears,  and  I  think  the  most  scientific  explanation  of  its  disappear- 
ance is  to  ascribe  it  to  evaporation  which  goes  on  so  systematically  on 
the  water,  as  is  known  to  all  students  of  meteorology.  These  friends  of 
mine  fish  in  remote  waters,  where,  because  of  the  remote  distances  and 
the  lack  of  shipping  facilities,  the  spoils  can  not  be  sent  to  admiring 
friends.  The  fisherman  is  thought  to  be  by  nature  a  sociable  biped,  and 
generous  in  delivering  up  his  ill-gotten  gains  to  those  who  sunburned 
not  neither  baited  a  hook.  But  these  good  men  and  true  must  smother 
their  generous  impulses.  They  are  perforce  reduced  to  the  necessity  of 
eating  their  own  catch,  or  giving  most  of  it  to  aborigines  who  inhabit  the 

82 


distant  lands  neighboring  on  the  great  water  where  this  whaling  expedi- 
tion does  business  in  ships.  Do  not  think  me  skeptical.  I  am  no 
Montaigne ;  but  1  state  plainly,  I  mislike  this  manner.  It  looks  theat- 
rical. Out  of  this  remote  water,  as  I  have  suggested,  they  bring  no  fish. 
We  can  all  testify  that  when  they  fish  in  streams  near  at  hand  they 
bring  no  fish  ;  and  without  desiring  to  call  in  question  their  veracity, 
when  they  tell  thrilling  experiences  with  monster  pickerel  and  musca- 
longes  and  other  finny  gentry,  "I  doubt  and  fear"  (perverted  from 
Burns).  They  dazzle  me  with  their  fine  powers  of  romance.  They  would 
have  charmed  our  friend  Sir  Walter  Scott  with  their  powers  of  inven- 
tion. However,  they  lack  variety.  There  are  evi- 
dently about  the  same  size  and  temper  and  fight- 
ing quality  of  fish  in  all  these  distant  fish  • 
ing  grounds.  The  same  struggle  besets 
all  these  doughty  spirits  who  fight  with 
rod  and  line.  They  find  no  new  dragons, 
but  are  satisfied  with  the  old  ones.  Why, 
Monsieur  Athos  could  have  told  them  a 
thing  The  Three  Guardsmen  were  fertile 
liars,  which  is  a  thing  I  delight  in  if  one 
attempts  that  style  of  art  (though  I  do  not  praise 
it.  Let  us  have  truth  is  my  motto,  which  I 
commend  with  all  heartiness  to  my  many 
friends  after  having  practiced  it  for  forty  to 
sixty  days  each  year  for  a  year  or  so).  They 
tell  the  same  story,  these  truthful  fishermen. 
Besides  this,  they  suborn  witnesses  (yet  I  like  not  the  THE  SPOILS 
sound  of  that  word,  it  seems  harsh,  though  indeed  I  mean  it  only  in 
gentle  courtesy  as  a  method  of  expressing  the  facts);  but  they  return 
to  their  neglected  home  fishless,  sunburnt,  truculent  lest  you  believe  not 
their  fishing  reminiscences,  and  on  one  occasion  brought  letters  of  refer- 
ence for  proof  of  their  valiant  exploits  from  the  proprietor  of  the  boats 
used,  from  the  postmaster,  from  the  hostelkeeper,  from  the  guide,  from 
the  cook,  and  from  sundry  other  functionaries ;  but  when  on  discreet 
investigation  (for  I  am  of  a  stern  and  unyielding  virtue  in  these  mat- 
ters), it  was  found  that  boat  owner,  postmaster,  hostelkeeper,  and  the 
remaining  witnesses  were  one  and  the  same  man;  and  on  being  con- 
fronted with  this  stern  truth  these  men  thrust  each  other  in  the  ribs 
and  laughed  to  tears  at  the  wickedness  of  their  conceits.  Such  things 

83 


grieve  me.  I  fear  there  will  be  no  fishermen  In  heaven  except  our 
elderly  friend  Peter,  who.  being  himself  a  fisherman,  may  in  fellow 
feeling  let  them  slip  through  his  fingers  after  the  manner  of  fish. 

But  not  to  continue  this  secular  pursuit  of  discovering  such  depravi- 
ties (of  which  there  would  be  no  end),  save  so  as  to  show  why  my  virtue 
is  always  at  white  heat — however  cold  the  thermometer  may  be — and 
that  I  will  not  be  decoyed  irito  a  sport  which  serves,  if  indulged  in  with 
sufficient  persistency,  to  eradicate  the  last  faint  vestige  of  truthfulness 
from  the  heart  of  the  votary.     Truth  must  still  have  an  ad- 
vocate.    I  will  not  lie  except  at  intervals  and  under  severe 
provocation ;  and  so  I  will  not  fish 

1  start  in  a  leisurely  fashion ;  for  haste  is  foe  to  good 
fishing.    To  have  a  deliberate  air  is  impressive  to  fish. 
1  make  haste  slowly  therefore.     I  am  not  eager  to  be 
known  as  starting  on  a  voyage  of  fishing ;  for  such 
enterprise  engenders  hallucinations  of  imagination  as 
to  the  results  of  your  expedition  (in  the  minds  of 
the  populace).     I   move  out  calmly,  like    a  ship 
starting   from    its   harbor   toward    high    seas.     A 
sweet  lady  I  know  smiles  at  me  going,  with  a  touch 
of    irony  in  her  face,  and  a  boy  picking  up  chips 
on  the  beach  pauses  (much  to  his  content,  for  he 
does  not  admire  work)  in  his  efforts,  to  give  me  a 
quizzical  look,  and  a  girl  smiles  at  me  with  a  wave 
of  hand  good  to  look  upon;  and  I  go  past  the  board 
walk  where   the  beech- trees  grow  and  cast  gentle 
shadows,  and  down  the  lane  of  sand  hills  peaked  with 
pines,  and  loiter  along  with  scant  precipitancy  as  befits 
a  man  going  on  such  solemn  business  as  fishing;  for  as 
Ike  Walton  has  shown,  fishing  is  the  soul  of  solemnity,  and 
is  after  all  no  sport,  but  life's  real  and  serious  business.     We 
must  not  therefore  approach  such  vocation  with  the  least  spirit  of  levity. 
I  sight  the  river  with  reeds  growing  solid  green  along  far  banks  where 
the  stream  bends  in  gentle  curves  like  a  boat's  prow,  and  rest  my  heart 
in  taking  a  long  breathing  view  of  the  lake  whose  waters  tilt  against  the 
sky  green  as  bulk  glass,  and  let  the  cool  wind  from  its  bosom  lave  me 
as  if  it  were  a  wave  washing  some  point  of  shore;  and  then  I  bethink 
me  that  I  have  no  bait  nor  any  line  nor  any  rod,  and  turn  back  in  medi- 
tative mood  so  as  not  to  appear  disconcerted.     I  reach  home,  take  these 

84 


inconsequential  items  as  a  conventional  matter  wholly ;  and  now  having 
rod  and  line  and  bait  I  slip  out  at  the  rear  of  my  house  and  slink  around 
out  of  sight  that  no  one  see  my  implements  of  the  chase  (the  aqueous 
chase),  and  sidle  toward  the  river. 

I  consider  myself  adroit  to  the  point  of  genius  in  the  matter  of  bait. 
I  think  I  ought  to  say  that.  Brains  will  tell  even  in  the  matter  of  going 
fishing.  While  supposedly  adroit  fishermen  keep  every  sort  of  fly  and 
deception  for  beguiling  wary  fish,  I,  believing  that  I  have  not  been 
weighted  down  with  intellectuality  for  naught,  sagaciously  (I  have  under- 
scored that  word,  not  through  conceit,  but  through  honest  speaking), 
take  for  my  bait  mutton.  This  I  do  because  mutton  is  so  ambiguous, 
so  versatile.  When  I  have  mutton  (in  my  pocket  tied  up  daintily  as  a 
man  will  tie  things  up,  in  a  piece  of  newspaper,  believing  that  even 
dead  sheep  should  have  culture  opportunities),  I  can  boldly  cast  for  all 
sorts  of  fish  inhabiting  lake  or  stream.  For  certain  sturdy,  aged,  self- 
reliant  fish,  male  fish, 
I  bait  with  mutton  and  * 
can  call  it  ram.  This 
bait  brings  experience 
and  pugilistic  propen- 
sionstothehook.  When 
I  wish  to  catch  young 
and  tender  fish  I  retain  the  same  bait  on  my  hook  ( I  never  change  bait 
while  it  can  remain  on  the  hook.  I  think  changing  bait  a  breach  of 
etiquette  to  the  bait).  While  bait  lasts  it  stays  on  my  hook.  I  am 
courteous  in  all  details  of  life.  So  here,  I  retain  the  bait,  but  speak  in 
bleating  tones  and  call  it  lamb.  When  I  wish  to  approach  bachelor  fish 
with  years  of  conquest  and  satiety  on  them  I  call  the  bait  ewe.  When 
I  appeal  to  the  gentler  sex  among  the  fish  I  call  the  bait  wether.  When 
I  angle  for  plebeian  fish  I  state  with  democratic  candor,  "This  is  mut- 
ton." The  result  is  practical  all  the  same.  I  have  equal  success  with 
the  varied  fish  and  varied  ages,  and  I  think  you  must  see  that  I  am  not 
nagged  by  the  occult  study  of  what  bait  to  use.  And  I  am  successful 
as  success  goes  with  me  in  a  heterogenous  fashion,  and  I  have  the 
feeling  that  in  so  doing  I  have  exhibited  a  manly  individuality  even  in 
baiting  my  hook. 

So  with  my  versatile  bait  I  set  out.  One  rod  and  line  suffice.  I 
always  have  a  cork  because  I  like  to  see  it  bob.  Things  seen  are 
mightier  than  things  felt  (quoted  in  part  from  some  poet),  and  I  enjoy 

85 


seeing  the  energetic  twitching  of  the  cork  (red  and  green  duly  mixed 
preferred),  for  it  reminds  me  of  the  motion  of  a  fish's  fins.  I  put  the 
hook  in  the  water,  which  is  the  stereotyped  way  of  doing  when  one  fishes, 
though  I  have  very  often  had  the  same  degree  of  success  when  I  have 
left  the  hook  on  land.  I  thrust  the  pole  into  the  shore  with  a  jab  which 
insures  the  pole  staying,  whatever  the  cork  does.  Having  done  this,  a 
glow  of  virtue  suffuses  my  frame  as  it  does  with  a  man  who  has  gone  to 
church  with  his  wife.  1  have  done  my  duty.  What  need  I  do  more  ? 
The  line  is  in  the  water ;  the  pole  is  in  the  bank ;  and  I  am  on  the  bank 
near  the  pole.  Now  let  the  fish  do  his  duty.  Let  him  make  the  cork 
bob;  let  him,  1  say,  for  I  shall  exert  myself  no  more.  I  am  fishing. 
Here  I  sit.  Except  for  nettles,  I  am  complaisant  and  self-righteous. 
If  the  fish  do  their  duty  and  measure  up  to  their  responsibility,  why  then 
the  cork  bobs,  whereat  my  fisherman  luck  is  satisfed,  and  my  passion 
of  sportsmanship  is  in  a  manner  allayed.  I  consider  the  desire  ex- 
hibited among  many  fishermen  to  catch  fish  to  be  a  rabid  species  of 
militarism  which  I  can  not  approve.  Seeing  the  fish  had  expressed 
neither  viva  voce  nor  aqua  voce,  a  desire  for  the  mild  rule  of  my  flag  or 
frying  pan,  I  can  not  think  of  thrusting  my  sovereignty  on  them  by  im- 
paling them  on  a  hook,  for  this  would  be  a  glaring  instance  of  militarism 
and  expansion ;  and  I  am  too  true  a  mugwump  (?)  to  be  a  friend  to 
either.  No,  fishermen  have  missed  the  point  of  the  argument.  Catch- 
ing fish  is  not  the  end  of  fishing,  Seeing  the  cork  bob  is  the  end  of 
fishing,  and  is  the  whole  duty  of  the  fisherman.  Here  is  an  advanced 
idea  which  I  hope  may  revolutionize  the  piscatorial  art.  New  ideas  I 
know  are  frequently  received  with  hostility.  Great  ideas  often  are.  I 
anticipate  antagonism.  I  do  not  care.  I  may  be  a  martyr,  but  no 
matter.  I  reaffirm  I  do  not  care.  I  have  the  martyr's  spirit.  My  an- 
cestors were  buccaneers  and  their  valor  survives  in  me,  and  if  a  sort  of 
fishy  martyrdom  awaits  me  for  the  bold,  unflinching,  intrepid,  deter- 
mined presentation  of  this  grand  and  revolutionary  thought,  I  will  sit  by 
my  bobbing  cork  and  wait  my  death  calmly.  So  strong  is  virtue. 
When  the  cork  bobs  I  feel  a  sense  of  relief  as  of  a  duty  per- 
formed in  a  satisfactory  and  even  in  a  praiseworthy  manner.  I 
shall  now  feel  free  to  go  on  with  my  fishing.  If  the  cork  does  not 
bob  I  feel  free  from  responsibility.  I  have  done  my  duty.  My  business 
is  to  bait  the  hook,  not  to  bite  at  the  bait.  Let  every  fish  bear  his  own 
burden.  Nor  am  I  a  monopolist.  My  soul  spurns  that  thought.  I  have 
done  my  part:  I  will  not  monopolize  functions.  Let  the  fish  have  room 

86 


for  the  play  of  his  powers.  The  hook  is  in  the  water.  I  have  done  my 
part  and  done  it  well.  I  will  leave  results  to  the  fish  ;  so  that  I  (with 
that  sagacity  which  marks  my  proceedings)  take  my  book  from  my 
pocket — I  have  brought  it  for  such  occasion.  If  the  fish  are  idle  I  must 
not  emulate  their  example.  I  will  read  my  friend  Stephen  Phillips. 
His  pastorals  shall  be  my  chore.  Now  when  I  have  a  book  which,  to 
change  my  friend  Milton's  phrase,  in  harmony  with  my  environment  (I 
use  that  word  not  as  knowing  its  meaning,  but  because  I  have  seen  it  in 
print  and  once  heard  it  mentioned  by  a  speaker,  now  sick  with  the 
grippe — a  book  is  the  solace  of  those  tardy  hours  in  which  a  fisherman 
awaits  the  desultory  humors  of  the  fish);  "Having  a  book"  (quoted 
from  my  preceding  remarks),  I  am  well  pleased  and  go  on  with  my 


ALONG  THE  STREAM 

fishing.  We  shall  get  on  well  to-day.  However  inattentive  to  their 
duty  the  fish  are,  I  will  not  be  inattentive  to  mine.  I  will  read  a  spell. 
My  friend  William  Wadsworth  was  a  fisher  of  my  sort — he  walked 
along  the  streams,  loved  them  and  dreamed  of  them  ;  and  I  will  in  defer- 
ence to  his  good  taste  read  him  betimes.  Now  fishing  seems  a  levity. 
I  leave  the  fish  to  their  own  devices.  The  cork  may  bob  or  sink  for 
all  of  me.  I  do  not  care.  Virtue  is  its  own  reward.  I  have  baited  the 
hook  and  have  placed  it  in  the  watery  element  (whatever  that  is).  Can 
any  ethical  code  demand  more  ?  To  do  more  would  be  a  work  of 
supererogation,  and  I  always  hold  that  works  of  supererogation  are  void. 
I  will  now  rest  until  the  sun  gets  in  my  eyes  and  the  perspiration  (peri- 
phrasis for  sweat),  starts  from  my  face,  whereupon  with  a  fine  courtesy 
worthy  of  Chesterfield  I  will  move  out  of  the  sun's  way.  If  I  am  not  a 
gentleman  I  am  nothing,  though  I  desire  to  make  no  boast. 

87 


Sometimes  for  the  sake  of  cultivating  versatility  in  location  though 
not  in  result,  I  take  up  my  traps  and  find  a  new  bank  to  sit  upon  and 
listen  to  the  whine  of  the  wind  in  the  pine-trees  (O  the  infinite  sadness 
of  it!),  or  walk  on  and  see  the  stream  edge  its  way  to  the  base  of  a 
sand  dune  where  not  a  grass  tussock  roots  in  the  shifting  sands,  which 
climbing,  1  see  some  friends  I  love,  fishing  at  long  distance,  and  out- 
ward the  sweep  of  the  wondrous  lake  with  sand  dunes  sowing  the  shore 
with  melancholy,  or  half  inland  again  see  the  river  moving  meditatively 
toward  the  lake  with  its  quiet  meadows  edging  its  quiet  goings.  Here 
the  swallows  skim  and  the  birds  build  and  rejoice,  and  the  white  clover 
and  the  full-sapped  milkweed  vie  with  each  other  in  their  donative  of 
odors.  There  the  pine-trees  clump  together  in  neighborly  fashion  and 


whisper  (sweet,  sweet,  their  whis- 
per is)  together  concerning  sor- 
row they  have  shared  together, 
and  a  crow  flaps  lazily  along  the 
sky  to  some  lonely  pines  across 
the  river  But  I  must  not  dally. 
I  am  a  fisherman.  I  must  to  my 

vocation ,  and  I  go  down  to  where  my  boat  is  anchored  in  lush  grasses 
and  unmoor  it,  and  trail  my  line  in  the  water  what  time  I  row  leisurely 
where  the  fishes  ought  to  be.  If  they  come  not  to  me  I  go  to  them. 
And  the  lap  of  the  water  against  the  prow  is  delicious,  and  the  wind 
from  the  lake  drifts  up  stream  like  a  wind  taking  holiday,  and  the  waters 
are  clear  and  dainty,  and  heaven  leans  and  looks  full-face  into  the 
stream.  Do  you  own  a  boat,  friend?  Then  you  are  rich.  I  feel  poor 
no  longer  since  this  boat  swung  at  the  end  of  my  rusty  chain,  and  the 
oars  across  its  breast  were  mine.  And  I  forget  to  fish,  but  remember 
to  dream,  and  the  landscape  is  fair  enough  to  be  part  of  heaven,  and  the 
sky  is  utter  blue  and  utter  high,  and  the  lake  can  be  seen  at  a  distance 
leaning  over  to  look  at  me,  and  the  sole  pine-tree  stands  a  sentinel  of 

88 


sorrow.     I  am  glad  in  my  heart  I  came  a-fishing.     This  is  sport.     But 
I  am  fishless — though  that  is  a  trifle  not  worth  mentioning. 

There  is  another  affable  way  of  fishing  I  have  often  practiced  and 
which  I  can  commend.  The  modus  operand!  is  as  follows :  Take  your 
pole  across  your  shoulder,  let  the  line  dangle  so  the  hook  is  free  to  catch 
in  the  limbs  of  the  trees  and  bushes  as  you  walk  along.  The  extracting 
of  the  hook  will  occupy  your  hands;  for  "Satan  finds  some  work  for 
idle  hands  to  do:"  and  so  I  always  think  it  wise  to  leave  the  line  dangle 
and  keep  my  hands  employed.  This  has  saved  me  from  many  a  snare. 
Thus  fortified  for  the  fishing  voyage,  I  go  boldly  near  a  stream.  I  walk 
along  its  banks.  I  watch  the  shimmer  on  the  stream,  and  the  shadows 
flung  in  the  waters  by  the  banks.  A  bunch  of  white  flags  sometimes 
(and  what  lily-white  blosoms  these  water-loving  flags  wear!)  and  some- 
times a  bank  of  sand  touches  the  water,  and  is  covered  with  bluebells 
which  cast  their  lovely  shadows  in  the  stream.  God  is  the  first  of  the 
photographers.  The  smell  of  damp  earth  is  in  my  nostrils,  and  the  odor 
of  the  mints  on  which  I  walk.  A  bird  flings  across  my  face  so  that  his 
wings  almost  touch  me  as  he  whirs  by,  and  a  redbird  whistles  as  if  he 
were  joking  with  you.  And  the  swallows  circle  with  an  almost  musical 
motion,  and  the  fair  clouds  lie  listless  as  if  absent  on  a  day  of  quiet,  and 
the  hill  climbs  up  from  the  stream's  edge  into  a  tangle  of  thicket  and 
brier  and  moss,  and  the  leap  of  some  brave  tree  going  toward  the  light 
with  ragged  branches,  or  a  meadow  smiles  across  the  stream,  and  a 
woodland  clouds  with  its  green  against  the  sky  across  the  field.  And  I 
throw  the  rod  down  and  forget  it  and  wander  smiling  along  as  a  pair  of 
lovers,  and  gather  flowers  and  find  a  red  clover  alone  and  gather  it  out 
of  sheer  courtesy,  or  surprise,  or  love  (what  matters  which?).  Or  a 
bird's  nest  decoys  me  through  the  dark  deeps  of  woods.  And  the 
stream  laughs  along.  And  you,  looking  at  the  sky,  step  unwittingly  into 
its  waters  and  like  the  souse  of  the  water  in  your  shoes.  Fishermen  of 
high  grade  are  careless  of  wet  feet ;  and  besides,  dew  is  in  the  thicket 
and  on  the  grass,  and  drops  from  the  trees,  and  how  can  you  help  hav- 
ing wet  feet  ?  And  not  to  have  them  is  to  play  at  fishing.  Let  us  be 
in  earnest  whatever  we  do.  Let  us  not  act  at  fishing  ;  let  us  fish.  I 
always  do.  Wade  across  the  stream  often  if  you  can  without  total  im- 
mersion. That  will  bring  you  into  contact  with  the  native  element  of  fish, 
and  may  give  you  the  smell  of  their  scales ;  but  you  can  get  wet,  and 
that  is  desirable,  for  you  feel  fishy  and  the  feeling  is  the  main  thing  in 
fishing.  I  follow  the  winding  of  the  stream.  I  go  and  caress  the 

89 


beech-tree  as  if  it  were  a  child,  arid  the  walnut-trees  with  their  corru- 
gated barks,  and  the  silver  bark  of  the  birch.  I  talk  to  the  birds  that 
eye  me  slyly,  calling  them  by  name.  I  scramble  up  banks,  and  fall  down 
hills — that  is  rare  exercise.  If  I  tear  my  trousers  it  gives  me  a  positive 
feeling  of  self-respect,  for  so  the  acrobats  do,  and  boys  and  fishermen ; 
and  to  be  of  this  company  is  honor  enough  to  be  sung  by  troubadours ; 
but  where  are  the  fishing  pole  and  the  line  with  its  pith  and  point?  I 
laid  them  down,  bless  me  I  know  not  where  Forgetfulness  is  a  sign  of 
genius.  Is  it  not  glory  enough  to  be  born  under  the  zodiacal  sign  of  the 
fishes?  But  where  is  that  pole?  To  go  home  fishless  and  poleless  is 
like  going  to  one's  grave  unwept.  I  will  hunt  that  pole,  but  will  now 
pause  to  eat  a  sandwich.  A  good  man  who  fishes  should  always  take  a 
snack.  It  is  sociable.  You  eat  it  yourself,  and  that  has  a  radiant  look 
of  hospitality.  If  you  go  fishing  alone  (which  is  the  real  etiquette  of 
fishing),  it  may  seem  selfish.  But  when  you  sit  eating  your  lunch,  that 
is  sociable.  Your  self-respect  and  spirit  of  genuine  generosity  are  now 
restored.  There  is  a  feeling  of  hospitableness  when  a  lone  fisherman 
fishes  out  of  his  pocket  a  lunch  which  he  has  filched  (not  to  say  fished) 
from  his  wife's  cupboard.  Besides,  you  feel  self-sacrificing,  for  you  are 
eating  for  two  to  keep  up  the  idea  of  friendliness  And  a  lunch  tastes 
good  under  such  circumstances.  I  make  my  appeal  to  all  candid  men, 
if  I  am  not  speaking  the  truth  when  I  say  so.  One  combines  business 
and  pleasure  and  philosophy  in  a  solitary  lunch;  and  the  better  the  lunch 
is  the  more  business,  philosophy,  and  pleasure  there  are.  But  where  is 
the  pole?  That  is  a  thing  to  consider;  but  deep  thought  is  not  con- 
ducive to  good  digestion,  hence  banish  thought  of  the  pole.  Away, 
base  care  !  On  with  the  lunch  !  Let  hospitality 
be  encouraged  !  There  is  yet  a  sliver  of  bread 
or  a  piece  of  chicken  to  be  dealt  with. 
On  with  the  lunch !  And  a  chipmunk 
standing  inquiringly,  and  I  may  say 
impertinently  on  end  (and  I  may  say 
on  the  right  end),  looks  inquiringly 
at  my  book  and  at  my  lunch  and  at 
me.  I  really  have  never  settled  the 
literary  preierences  of  the  chipmunk, 
though  I  think  I  could  if  I  tried.  A 
kingfisher  dashes  down  to  the  river 
from  a  stump  where  he  has  been 


sitting  so  sedately.  I  really  suppose  that  seeing 
me  eat  has  made  him  hungry.  He  will  have  his 
lunch  too.  But  the  light  on  the  water  is  sweet  to 
see,  and  the  ripples  run  like  laughter  over  the 
river's  face,  and  the  cattails  not  yet  tailed  stand 
sedately  like  folks  at  a  funeral,  and  the  blue  of  the 
sky  is  clouding  for  rain,  and  a  drop  from  the  cloud 
is  on  my  face,  and  the  gray  sky  is  beautiful  as  a 
Vision  of  the  twilight — and  where  is  the  pole?  I 
will  leave  a  crust  of  bread  and  a  chicken  bone  on  the 
bank.  The  chipmunk  has  been  neighborly,  maybe 
he  will  like  it;  and  I  will  throw  some  shreds  of  my 
lunch  into  the  water  as  an  offering  to  the  fish. 
They  have  given  me  a  rare  morning.  The  line  is 
not  wet,  but  I  am,  and  the  fish  have  not  been  be- 
guiled, for  I  have  not  grown  vicious  yet  and  baited 
my  hook.  But  I'll  be  blessed  if  I  know  where  the 
pole  and  the  line  and  the  hook  are  ;  and  I  will  go  and 
hunt  them.  And  after  a  series  of  meanderings  in 
mind  I  conclude  they  may  be  in  one  of  seventeen 
places,  which  is  a  serious  gain  in  the  question  of 
discovery  and  conclude  them  practically  found 
now.  I  may  be  leisurely  and  gather  wild  roses 
and  dainty  ferns;  and  I  sit  down  beside  a  wild 
flower  devoutly  as  beside  a  woman,  and  wonder 
about  its  loneliness  and  loveliness,  and  if  God 
knows  it  is  there;  and  I  walk  in  ripples  of  undulat- 
ing grasses  that  hem  the  edge  of  the  stream,  and 
a  phcebe  plaints  near  me,  and  far  across  the  river  where  the  milk 
weeds  grow  and  hang  their  ball  blossoms,  a  hawk  flies  and  flings  his 
eager  shadow  on  the  water  or  on  the  meadow;  for  the  sky  has  cleared 
and  the  rain  cloud  has  forgotten  its  business  and  has  gone  a-gypsying 
with  the  wind.  And  here  I  go  hunting  for  the  fishing  line.  Strangely 
enough  I  was  mistaken.  It  was  not  in  any  of  the  seventeen  places, 
but  is  in  the  nineteenth.  There  it  was  sprawling  indolently  like  a  hobo 
in  the  shade  with  his  dinner  fragments  beside  him,  with  the  flies  upon 
him,  and  the  blue  bottles  buzzing  luxuriously  around.  But  I  stand  with 
a  sense  of  triumph.  I  have  found  the  pole  and  line.  Some  people 
have  poor  memories.  I  pity  them.  There  is  no  excuse  for  forgetting 

91 


f 


L 


where  you  left  your  things!  And  I  have  had  great  luck  in  fishing,  arid 
a  great  day  of  sport.  "What  luck?"  say  the  people  leeringly  as  I 
pass.  "Fine,"  I  answer  bravely.  "Where  are  the  fish?"  they  insinu- 
atingly ask.  "I  threw  them  back,"  I  reply.  So  brave  is  truth.  To 
refrain  from  catching  the  fish  is  the  most  delicate  and  generous  way 
of  throwing  them  back.  The  fish  are  there  and  truth  is  vindicated; 
and  I  go  home  with  my  heels  on  the  ground,  but  my  head  in  the  sky 
and  hang  my  day's  fishing  up  with  my  fishing  pole.  And  the  rose  is 
fragrant  yet,  and  the  trees  cast  their  shadows  across  my  face,  and  the 
river  ripples  and  flashes  brightly  a  perpetual  pleasure.  I  am  glad  I 
went  fishing,  and  had  good  luck. 

Sweet  was  the  meadow  scent, 

And  blue  the  sky, 
When  we  a- fishing  went, 

My  rod  and  I. 

Cares  staid  at  home  in  bed 

While  we  went  free; 
And  scurvy  care  is  dead 

To  such  as  we. 

Green  was  the  summer  land, 

The  air  was  balm; 
Fair  the  bleak  pine-trees  stand; 

My  heart  was  calm. 

Out  on  the  river 's  rim, 

My  spirit  sings 
Roundels  of  praise  to  Him 

Who  summer  brings. 

So  while  fair  morning  drifts, 

Fishing  I  go. 
Down  through  the  green  wood's  rifts 

Warm  sunlights  glow. 

Glad  laughter  takes  my  hcnd 

And  holds  it  tight, 
As  through  this  summer  land. 
92  /  stray  till  night. 


THE  GOINGS  OF  THE  WINDS 


THE  GOINGS  OF  THE  WINDS 


IKE    many    another    word    freighted    with 
beauty,   this   word  "goings"    comes   from 
the  Bible.     Those  old  King  James  trans- 
lators were  poets  to  a  man,  which  accounts 
for   our    Bible    being  both   the    classic  of 
Hebrew   literature   and   English   literature. 
One   translator  gets   the  sense   in  a  cold 
;  literality  like  a  dead  tree  trunk;    another 
suffuses  his  translation  with  poetry,  as  a 
tree  is  shaded  by  its  own  leaves.    "When 
thou  hearest  the  goings  in  the  tops  of 
the  mulberry-trees"  is  a  poet's  way  of 
telling   a  wind  is  blowing  through   tree 
tops.     "Goings"  are  sound  mixed  with 
movement,  the  marching  of  the  wind's 

feet  along  the  pathways  of  the  tree  tops;  and  what  is  or  can  be  sweeter! 
I  have  often  wondered  if  God  could  forget;  whether  he  ever  had 
obliviscent  moods;  whether  any  syllable  ever  fell  out  of  his  words  as 
they  do  from  ours;  whether  he  ever  could  forget  anything  belonging 
to  the  calendar  of  beauty.  I  think  he  does  not.  Else  how  is  every 
beautiful  possibility  present?  In  making  the  world  God  thought  of 
everything  ministrant  to  a  blessed  life.  Can  we  think  of  any  omitted 
mercy?  Did  he  not  put  beauty  in  the  green  sward  and  in  the  blue 
sky?  What  colors  could  have  been  devised  to  rest  the  eyes  and  com- 
fort the  heart  like  this  bewildering  green  upon  the  earth  and  this 
bewildering  blue  in  the  sky?  Did  he  forget  grace  when  he  was 
making  the  cypress  or  pine,  or  the  larch,  or  the  quivering  aspen,  or 
the  doughty  oak,  or  the  leaning  willow?  He  could  have  made  all 

97 


plants  flowerless,  as  he  did  the  ferns,  or  he  could  have  dyed  all  flow- 
ers with  one  pigment,  or  he  might  have  left  odors  out  in  compounding 
his  flowers  and  leaves  and  grasses  and  earths;  but  thanks  to  his  good 
Providence,  he  forgot  not  the  sandalwood's  clinging  fragrance,  nor  the 
scents  of  roses  and  wheat  stubble  nor  new-mown  hay  nor  green  wal- 
nuts, nor  forgot  to  make  dews  at  night,  to  distill  odors  from  woodlands 
and  plains,  nor  neglected  that  sweet  inrush  of  earth  and  air  smells 
which  puffs  in  the  face  some  unexpected  morning  and  sings  to  the 
soul — Springtime!  God  ransacked  his  treasuries  when  he  made  this 
world;  nor  was  it  in  spirit  of  haste  or  obliviousness,  when,  on  the  day 
he  finished  the  building  of  his  world  he  said,  "I  have  found  all  things 
good."  If  the  wind  fans  a  hot  cheek  to  blow  its  fever  out,  or  fills  the 
flapping  sails  of  innumerable  ships,  I  count  that  to  be  a  lesser  blessing 
than  its  gift  of  touch  and  music.  The  wind's  touch  can  be  as  tender 
as  a  loving  woman's  caress  and  its  music  as  gentle  and  sweet  as  mem- 
ories fetched  from  a  happy  past.  To  miss  the  blowing  of  the  trumpets 
of  the  winds  is  to  suffer  loss.  The  wind's  voices  are  inexpressible 
music.  I  love  their  laughter  and  their  weeping,  their  wailing  of  autumn 
and  their  leaf-patter,  like  the  sound  of  spring  showers.  I  was  reared  in 
Kansas,  where  winds  have  what  some  esteem  a  vicious  supremacy,  but 
to  me  their  trumpetings  and  stormy  chargings  to  and  fro,  their  shrill 
falsettos  through  leafless  trees;  their  summer  sweep,  which  wrecks 
the  fleets  of  clouds  as  if  they,  were  ships  blown  on  ragged  ocean  rocks; 
their  whine  at  the  casement,  like  a  patient  dog  pleading  for  its  master, 
and  their  wholly  tender  touch  of  a  June  evening  wind — I  love  them  all. 
Not  one  will  I  willingly  leave  out  of  my  memory  or  deny  room  at  the 
fireside  of  my  life.  They  are  part  of  me.  It  may  be  because  my 
father's  folk  for  unknown  generations  were  sea  captains  and  lovers  of 
the  raging  waters,  tempest-swirled  and  were  all  drowned  at  sea,  that 
tempests  are  mixed  with  my  blood  and  are  part  of  my  soul's  dear 
possessions.  But  certain  I  am  that  winds  do  not  vex  me  and  that  I 
am  lonely  apart  from  them  as  missing  one  of  my  home  folks.  Their 
ardor  warms  my  spirit  and  their  gentle  quiet  is  like  a  call  to  prayer. 
Jesus  loved  the  winds,  and,  as  I  think,  tore  a  scrap 
from  the  book  of  his  boyhood  when  he  said  (he 
was  thinking  of  Nazareth  when  he  spoke),  "The 
wind  bloweth  where  it  listeth" — those  un- 
certain, unmannerly,  brusque  winds,  which 

^  betimes  whipped  up  Esdraelon's  loitering 

98 


valley  from  the  Great  Sea,  or  on  occasion  springing  with  sudden  pas- 
sion out  of  the  Jordan  Valley  over  the  Nazareth  cliffs  toward  the  far 
and  fair  blue  waters.  Could  Jesus  forget  them?  On  many  a  solemn 
night,  alone  but  not  lonely,  he  had  sat  with  chin  upon  his  hands  and 
listened  to  his  hill  winds 
blow.  The  winds — and  he 
made  them!  Think  of  that, 
my  heart.  H  is  winds —  now 
thine.  And  when  the  sea 
was  whipped  with  tempests 
by  the  lashings  of  the  winds 
the  wild  and  boisterous 
waves  disturbed  him  not 
only  in  dreams,  he  thought 
he  heard  the  heavenly  bu- 
gles blow,  and  wakened 
from  his  happy  sleep  when 
the  scared  disciples  wailed 
above  the  wind's  wild 
"goings,"  "Carest  thou  not 
if  we  perish?"  Then  he 
awoke  and  spake  lovingly 
to  the  winds  (no  harshness 
in  his  voice  nor  threat  upon 
his  face)  saying  only, "Keep 
still  for  a  little  while,  your 
fury  frightens  them,  keep 
still.  Peace,  be  still,"  and 
the  winds  threw  their  brazen 
trumpets  in  the  sea  and 
were  still.  He  loved  the 
winds;  and  all  their  sobbing 
lutes  and  viols  and  'cellos  THUNDERHEAD 

were  dear  to  him. 

How  I  have  rejoiced  in  God's  winds!  Under  Niagara,  when  the 
winds  have  blown  fury  blasts,  and  on  the  mountains,  when  the  snows 
had  loosened  their  garments  at  the  throat  for  freer  wrestling  and  where 
down  some  long  canon  winds  swept  like  vernal  freshets,  and  up  among 
melancholy  pines,  where  every  pine  was  as  a  chief  musician,  like  Asaph 

99 


in  his  ancient  choir,  and  on  bare  plains,  where  only  the  surly  sage  brush 
leaned  prone  before  the  gale,  and  on  lakes,  where  water  tumbled  like 
romping  children  when  the  winds  frisked  with  them  in  gay  moods  of 
laughter  and  romping,  or  when  the  winds  were  in  outrageous  anger  and 
plowed  the  fair  waters  with  the  share  of  the  hurricane,  and  in  forests, 
where  the  paths  are  narrow  and  very  dim  and  shadows  are  many  and 
sunshine  rare — O  the  goings  of  the  winds  in  such  a  wood  when  leaves 
flutter,  as  half  in  dream,  and  the  sound  sobs  like  remote  surf,  and  winds 

pass  still, 

"Fainter  onward,  like  wild  birds  that  change 
Their  season  in  the  nigh*  and  wail  their  way 
From  cloud  to  cloud," 

,   and  on  headlands  of  the 

old  sad  ocean,  where 
Mount  Desert  rocks,  ban- 
nered with  pine-trees 
fronted  by  the  sea  (rocks 
naked  as  the  strength  of 
death)  or  on  headlands  of 
the  Golden  Gate  fronting 
burning  sunsets  and  the 
far  and  barren  reaches  of 
the  affable  Pacific,  and 
on  cliffs  of  the  Isle  of 
Mona,  where  heather 
mixes  honey  with  ocean  winds  and  rocks  lean  darkly  over  Spanish 
Head,  fruitful  of  shipwrecks,  and  against  whose  sword  edges  Philip's 
fleet  proved  but  a  feeble  jest — on  such  headlands  have  I  heard  the 
winds  and  gloried  in  their  tumults  as  in  the  coming  of  a  friend;  and 
many  a  night  have  I  walked  steamer  decks  to  watch  the  marching 
stars  and  hear  the  regurgitations  of  multitudinous  waves  a-sobbing;  or 
in  winter  in  the  city,  when  cold  winds  keyed  their  voices  to  distress 
like  beggars  gaunt  and  cold,  and  shrieked  like  despair  which  had  for- 
gotten laughter,  when  the  thin-clad  and  well-clad  hurried  home  as 
half  afraid,  and  children  play  indoors,  and  snows  whip  up  alley-ways  and 
down  crowded  half-quieted  streets  (seeing  a  storm  makes  its  own 
calm),  and  down  chimneys  with  singing  like  a  last  minstrel,  or  spits  in 
your  face  like  an  indignant  beggar  to  whom  you  have  refused  charity, 
or  tender  summer  winds  which  stray  down  where  long  marsh  grasses 
grow  in  hearing  of  the  sea. 

100 


THE  SURF 


How  I  love  the  dim  wind  on  the  wide  water;  but  as  for  that,  what 
wind  do  I  not  love,  and  for  what  one  do  I  not  listen,  whether  singing  a 
quiet  song  or  trumpeting  in  Titan  anger;  whether  it  is  gentle  touch,  like 
a  beloved  hand  upon  our  sleeping  cheek,  or  cruel  and  vindictive,  like  a 
Scythian — nay,  I  can  not  deny  that  I  love  them  all. 

What  musicians  winds  are!  They  are,  in  truth,  the  only  musicians. 
All  voices,  whether  human  or  blown  from  instruments,  or  shocked  from 


jjMifa  w    tfi 

1h>cli 


A  PATCH   OF  CLOVER  WHERE  SPRING  WINDS   LINGER 

wild  waves  that  hammer  on  the  rocks,  what  are  they  save  the  blowing 
of  the  winds?  Lowell  says 

"The  organ  blows  its  dream  of  storm," 

and  no  more  accurate  word  has  ever  been  spoken  regarding  organ 
music,  which  is  the  wind  blowing  across  the  reeds.  I  have  sat  in 
cathedrals  in  the  lowering  dusk  and  felt  the  organ  blow  its  gathering  gale 
about  my  spirit.  The  organ  was  the  wind  of  God.  The  Devas  play: 

"We  are  the  voices  of  the  wandering  wind 

Which  moan  for  rest  and  rest  can  never  find," 
and  they  are  sad 

"As  sunset  in  a  land  of  reeds," 
103 


and  very  full  of  meaning.     In  an  elect  moment,  Whittier  made  music 
for  the  winds  to  make  their  meaning  clear: 

"Yet  on  my  cheek  I  feel  the  western  wind, 

And  hear  it  telling  to  the  orchard  trees, 

And  to  the  faint  and  flower-forsaken  bees, 

Tales  of  fair  meadows  green  with  constant  streams, 
And  mountains  rising  blue  and  cold  behind 

Where  in  moist  dells  the  purple  orchis  gleams, 
And  starred  with  white  the  virgin's  bower  is  twined. 

So  the  overwearied  pilgrim  as  he  fares 
Along  life's  summer  waste,  at  times  is  fanned 

Even  at  noontide  by  the  cool,  sweet  airs 
Of  a  serener  and  a  holier  land." 

And  winds  laded  with  odors — you  can  not  escape  their  sweet  com- 
radeship. And  winds  blowing  across  a  field  where  haycocks  exhale  fra- 
grance, who  can  escape  their  witchery?  Such  winds  know  how  to  spoil 
waters  and  fields  and  forests  of  spikenards  and  balsams.  I  have  in- 
haled fragrance  from  winds  blown  fresh  from  the  sea  through  moors  of 
purple  heather,  and  can  I  forget  the  poetry  of  it  even  in  heaven?  I 
pray  I  may  not. 

Winds  of  spring,  apple-scented  and  with  earth-smell  in  them !  And 
walking  through  woods  at  night  when  dew  drips  from  the  leaves  and 
the  score  or  more  of  odors  saturate  the  air,  and  the  frog's  song  sings 
up  from  marshes  and  ravines  as  if  that  were  audible  odor,  and  star- 
light plays  hide-and-seek  with  you  through  the  foliage,  when  there  puffs 
in  your  face  the  musk  of  many  odors  mixed,  then  you  could  catch  the 
Wind  and  kiss  her  on  the  cheek  like  a  girl,  for  sheer  delight.  Then 
when  lilacs  blow,  and  spring  hastens  on  to  June  and  white  clover  chokes 
the  air  with  heavy  perfumes,  and  roses  tell  in  the  dark  where  they  are 
blooming  by  the  fragrance  they  lent  the  breeze  as  it  strayed  indolently 
through  their  dear  delights,  or  later,  when  harvests  spill  their  essences  to 
the  languorous  winds,  and  later  still,  when  winds  bear  their  sad  freightage 
of  autumn  leaves  falling,  or  fallen,  and  faded.  0  the  wind  is  the  poet 
laureate  of  autumn;  and  the  lonely,  tearful  music  and  autumnal  fra- 
grance of  leaf-distilled  perfumes  fairly  drug  the  senses  of  the  spirit  till 
perforce  the  winds  make  us  poets  against  our  will  and  reason. 

In  one  of  Hosea  Biglow's  pastoral  preludes  (bless  him  who  wrote 
them  and  gave  us  Hosea!)  is  a  touch  of  genius  in  discriminating 
odors.  "Mr.  Wilbur  sez  to  Hosea,  'Wut's  the  sweetest  smell  on 

104 


airth?'  'Noomone  hay,'  sez  I,  pooty  bresk,  for  he  was  allus  hank- 
erin'  'round  in  hayin'.  'Nawthin'  of  the  kine,'  sez  he.  'My  leetle 
Huldy's  breath,'  sez  I  ag'in.'  'You're  a  good  lad,'  sez  he,  his  eyes 
sort  of  riplin'  like,  for  he  lost  a  babe  onc't  about  her  age — 'the  best  of 
perfooms  is  just  fresh  air,  fresh  air,'  sez  he,  emphysizin',  'athout  no 
mixture.'  "  And  that  is  worth  thinking  of.  All  odors  the  winds  bear 
are  defective  as  compared  v/ith  the  utter  freshness  of  the  moving  airs 
themselves.  "Jest  fresh  air," — what  an  exhilarant  that  is.  Drinking 
water  spouting  fresh  from  mountain  snow 
drifts,  and  the  blowing  of  clean  air  in  the 
race,  and  the  making  your  piayer  to  God 
when  life  grows  hard  or  glad — are  not  these 
apart  from  all  things  else  and  allow  of  no 
comparisons.  Similes  are  lifeless  here.  And 
the  breath  of  a  wind  after  a  rain!  Wind  is 
unspeakable  for  music  and  odors.  What  a 
happy  fate  to  be  associated  with  such  recollec- 
tions. If  man  or  woman  might  hope  in  com- 
ing years,  when  far  beyond  the  sight  of 
eyes  or  hearing  of  the  ears,  to  stay  sweet 
memories  in  hearts  which  could  not  forget 
them,  what  could  human  heart  ask  more? 
And  I  have  known  such  folks.  The  mention 
of  their  names  makes  me  think  of  sunlit  fields. 
All  sweet  things  lie  adjacent  to  their  person- 
alities, just  as  trees  and  shade  and  gurgling 
brooks  and  trailing  clouds  and  sublime  soli- 
tudes and  what  seems  the  ragged  frontiers  of  the  world  lie  adjacent  to 
huge  mountains. 

Winds  are  fortunate  to  be  the  carriers  of  aromas  and  music;  to 
come  freighted  with  the  lilac's  breath  and  the  happy  voices  of  happy 
women  s  laughter.  But  I  do  not  hesitate  to  confess  that  the  rarest 
wind  I  have  ever  experienced  is  blown  from  Kansas  prairies  on  summer 
twilights.  About  midway  in  Kansas,  east  and  west,  is  this  wind  in 
perfection.  Nothing  equals  it.  I  have  loved  winds  blown  from  briny 
seas  and  from  the  emerald  deserts  of  great  lakes  and  the  St.  Lawrence 
dreaming  northward  like  a  drifting  ship,  and  from  Alp  and  Sierra,  and 
my  belief  still  holds  that  for  unutterable  tenderness,  part  wind,  part 
spirit,  for  poetry  whose  threads  can  never  be  unbraided,  these  Kansas 

105 


A  SINGING   BROOK 


June  prairie  winds  have  not  any  competitor.  This  may  be  the  love  of 
my  lifetime  veering  my  judgment,  though  I  incline  to  believe  this  is  the 
judgment  of  a  balanced  and  an  equal  mind.  The  prairie  wind,  as  I  tell 
you,  has  a  witchery  quite  beyond  the  telling  of  any  man.  There  have 
I  walked  along  the  shores  of  summer  twilight  as  on  the  shores  of  blue 
and  beautiful  Galilee,  and  caressing,  like  an  angel's  hand,  went  the  dear 
wind,  and  in  it  a  voice,  half  whisper  and  half  dream,  its  touch,  like  the 
shadow-touch  of  a  fond  hand  passing  across  you,  yet  scarcely  touching 
you;  the  hush,  and  after  that  the  slow  streaming  wind,  like  a  breath 
from  heaven  upon  a  pilgrimage  across  the  spaces,  so  remote  its  origin 
appeared;  and  journeying  not  any  whither,  yet  everywhere  and  in  no 
haste,  loverlike  loving  to  linger  for  another  kiss — such  a  wind  withal 
as  one  might  love  to  have  kiss  him  on  the  face  that  evening,  when, 
after  a  long  journey,  with  bleeding  feet,  he  walked  in  through  some 
postern  gate  out  on  the  fields  of  heaven  sown  to  asphodels,  and  dim 
lights  and  violets  and  immortelles.  Such  is  the  twilight  summer  wind 
in  Kansas  when  the  prairie  grasses  stoop  a  little  to  let  the  zephyrs  by. 
To  feel  this  necromancy  once  is  worth  a  pilgrimage;  seeing  it  will 
endure  among  the  luculent  recollections  of  a  happy  life. 


"  The  wind  to-night  is  cool  and  free, 
The  wind  to-night  is  westerly, 
Sweeping  in  from  the  plains  afar, 
Sweet  and  faint. 

My  thoughts  to-night  are  far  and  free, 
My  thoughts  to-night  are  westerly; 
Sweeping  out  on  the  plains  afar, 
Where  roses  grow  and  grasses  are. 
My  heart  to-night  is  wild  and  free, 
My  heart  to-night  is  westerly," 

-JOHN   NORTHERN   HILLIARD. 

George  Macdonald  has  felt  the  heavenly  hill- 
winds  blow: 

"0  wind  of  God  that  bio  west  in  the  mind, 
Blow,  blow  and  wake  the  gentle  spring  in  me ; 
Blow,  swifter  blow,  a  strong,  warm  summer  wind, 
Till  all  the  flowers  with  eyes  come  out  to  see, 
Blow  till  the  fruit  hangs  red  on  every  tree." 


Blow,  wind  of  God! 


106 


THE  FALLS  OF  ST.  CROIX 


THE  FALLS  OF  ST.  CROIX 


[HOUGH  not  an  artist,  I  sit  down  in  hearing 
of  the  laughter  of  running  water  to  paint  a 
picture.  The  commonest  artists  may  at- 
tempt the  fairest  landscape,  which  may 
seem  to  justify  this  present  attempt.  The 
place  is  the  falls  of  the  St.  Croix;  though  I 
would  have  you  forget  the  village  and  re- 
member the  place.  Yet,  scarcely  that,  for 
in  the  air  last  night  swung  the  sweet  ca- 
dences of  a  church  bell,  a  music  not  to  be 
heard  lightly  or  without  reverence,  whether 
in  crowded  city  or  in  solitary  hamlet,  or  on 
far  mountain  side;  for  what  minds  of  God, 
in  an  instant,  without  effort,  reaches  the 
sublime.  However,  forget  the  village,  save 

its  swinging  church  bell,  and  remember  only  the  place  where  the  river 
falls  and  runs  away. 

I  am  attracted  by  the  river's  name.  There  was  a  touch  of  the  poet 
in  those  old  French  voyageurs.  And  if  they  were  Jesuits,  as  was  so 
often  the  fact,  religion  mixed  with  their  poetry;  and  discovery  was  their 
poetry  as  hymns  were  the  poetry  of  George  Herbert  and  Keble;  and 
they  starred  the  way  they  discovered  by  their  "saints"  and  a  quaint  and 
touching  festival  of  names,  making  their  discoveries  one  long  pilgrimage 
to  Jerusalem.  This  river,  some  forgotten  lover  of  the  cross  named  St. 
Croix,  and  the  name  puts  me  to  prayer.  For  which  cause,  seeking 
some  solitude  where  I  might  "knit  up  the  raveled  sleave  of  care,"  1 
chose  this;  and  the  name  did  not  deceive  me.  I  am  glad  I  came.  The 
river  is  not  what  it  once  was,  for  rivers  miss  their  youth  as  age  does, 

ill 


and  their  stature  abates  with  the  passage  of  years.  The  tilled  lands 
grow  thirsty  and  drink  like  a  sweaty  harvester,  and  so  exhaust  the  foun- 
tains which  used  to  flow  into  the  rivers.  The  gains  of  our  largest  civili- 
zation are  touched  with  loss.  Many  of  the  pines  have  been  taken,  only 
a  few  are  left  to  tell  survivors  of  another  era,  what  sort  of  day  was 
theirs.  At  this  point  on  the  St.  Croix,  the  banks  are  tall  so  as  to  leap 
to  the  dignity  of  hills.  There  is  no  room  for  tillage  near  the  river's  bed, 
and  so  the  dusty  road  and  the  cottage,  where  love  leans  above  its  cradle, 
and  the  woods  with  their  hidden  tinkle  of  cow  bell  and  a  mill,  where 
crystal  waters  of  a  boisterous  brook  turn  the  wheel,  as  if  such  labor  were 
a  jest, — these  are  my  fellow-citizens  at  the  falls  of  St.  Croix. 

Here  the  river  runs  from  north  to  south,  with  barely  a  quiver  of  the 
compass,  only  curving  a  little,  as  streams  must.  The  valley  dims  upon 
the  eye,  at  either  extreme  hid  in  a  cloud  of  trees,  southward,  northward. 
The  backlands  stand  somberly  in  the  distance.  Knobs  of  hills  are  sen- 
tineled by  pine-trees  ragged  as  Spanish  soldiers.  The  crests  of  the 
ridges  against  the  west  are  one  uninterrupted  forest,  in  whose  shadow 
insects  drone  in  undisturbed  quiet  and  violets  blow  with  no  one  to  pick 
them.  To  the  east  is  a  zigzag  line  of  hills,  indented  here  and  there  by 
an  intruding  valley  or  a  road  with  its  smoke  of  dust.  On  a  sudden,  a 
point  of  green  hills  shoots  up  like  the  tangled  leap  of  some  emerald 
fountain,  and  this  hill  catches  and  holds  sunlight  when  the  valley  thinks 
the  sun  has  set.  A  dusty  road  ambles  along  the  river's  brink  like  some 
loitering  lad ;  and  along  this  a  wagon  rattles  or  a  carriage  clatters,  or  a 
workman  stoops  with  a  lunch  pail  empty  in  his  hand,  or  the  woman  and 
her  lover  linger  in  the  dusk,  or  a  little  child  with  bare  feet  patters  in  the 
dust  or  wades  in  the  clear  stream  edging  the  road  with  its  indescribable 
loveliness,  and  the  wind  "shakes  from  the  trees  the  dust  of  day,"  as 
Victor  Hugo  has  it. 

This  retreat  reminds  me  of  New  England  hills,  which  always  appeal 
to  me  as  a  loveliness  almost  unapproachable.  In  New  England  hills  is 
a  redundancy  of  moss  and  ferns  and  grasses  and  deep  oozy  earth,  and 
deep  chalices  in  which  the  waters  rest  from  motion,  obscured  from 

112 


sight,  and  hidden  alleys  down  which  the  waters  pass  with  a  stealthy  step, 
so  that  you  may  pass  and  repass  and  not  know  that  you  and  the  brook 
are  neighbors, — such  a  confederation  of  beauty,  entrancing  as  autumn 
when  it  frequents  the  hills,  is  all  but  without  competitor.  This  St.  Croix 
region  more  nearly  reaches  this  faroff  beauty  than  Rocky  Mountain  or 
Sierra  or  any  place  I  have  lit  on  in  my  Western  wanderings.  Here  the 
St.  Croix  falls  down  a  gorge  with  multitudinous  music.  What  in  old 
times  was  perchance  a  falls  is  now  a  turbulent  rapids,  but  is  spend- 
thrift in  music;  and  what  more  could  we  require?  and  I  love,  sleeping 
lightly  with  head  at  the  window  so  as  to  miss  no  music  when  I  wake,  if 


THE  WALLED   ROCKS 

but  for  a  moment  (and  the  waters  seem  scarcely  disquieted,  the  rapids 
being  not  turbulent  now  nor  precipitous)  to  hear  the  voices  as  if  an 
angel  shook  music  from  his  mantle.  The  bed  and  banks  of  the  river 
are  a  red  granite  worn  by  the  polishing  of  the  waters  smooth  as  the  pol- 
ished shaft  which  tells  where  lies  some  blessed  sleeper  dead,  but  not 
forgotten.  So  polished  are  these  rocks  you  must  step  with  watchfulness 
or  lame  you  for  your  carelessness.  Knots  of  rocks  stand  in  the  current 
of  the  stream  like  some  sturdy  spirit  in  turbulent  wars  when  others  have 
forgotten  to  be  brave.  Some  of  the  wall  rocks  on  the  bank  are  yellow 
as  ocher;  and  against  these  dash  crests  of  spray  as  the  stream  foams 

113 


down  the  rapids  betimes  and  flashes  up  as  a  spirit  in  prayer,  or  as 
touching  the  old  rock  out  of  compassion  for  its  eternal  quiet  or  out 
of  sport  and  raillery,  I  know  not  which. 

I  lie  under  a  ragged  cedar  on  the  eastern  bank.  Its  shadows  and 
odors  are  a  tent,  and  its  leaning  branches  brush  my  face  when  the 
wind  stirs,  and  its  odors  house  me  in  their  sacred  balsam.  The  winds 
sing  lazily  through  the  trees  and  touch  the  quiet  cedars  into  indolent 
motion,  and  the  aspen  near  by  dances  its  every  leaf  as  with  some 
apocalypse  of  joy;  and  the  locust  sends  his  strident  call  through  the 
woods  and  across  the  stream;  and  a  solitary  killdee  shrills  his  plaintive 
call  as  he  races  from  pool  to  pool  on  the  river's  brink;  and  the  wren 
chatters  in  wren  dialect,  screened  from  inquisitive  eyes,  or  the  bluejay 
calls  hoarsely,  "I  am — I  am  here — here — here,"  as  if  everybody  was 
interested  in  that  information,  and  the  wind  blows  in  my  face  with  a 
breath  as  of  early  winter,  refreshing  as  it  comes  from  mountain  streams; 
and  I  lie  and  read  Lowell,  and  am  pensive  and  yet  glad.  I  am  reading 
the  search  for  the  singing  leaf, 

"And  deep  through  the  green- wood  rode  he 

And  asked  of  every  tree, 
0  if  you  have  ever  a  singing  leaf 

I  pray  you  give  it  me. 
And  the  trees  all  kept  their  counsel, 

And  never  a  word  said  they 
Only,  there  sighed  from  the  tree-tops 

A  music  of  seas  far  away. ' ' 

And  with  such  an  afternoon  in  such  a  place  the  world  draws  off  like 
a  defeated  army, — far  off,  where  it  seems  not  so  much  as  be.  The  sun 


PINES,  RAGGED  AS  SPANISH   SOLDIERS 
114 


changes  the  position  of  shadows  of  rock  and  cedar  and  flings  handf uls  of 
sunshine  in  my  face  out  of  sheer  joy  and  sportiveness.  The  insects 
whine  drowsily  (though  they  mean  no  music),  and  the  voice  of  St.  Croix 
Falls  sings  on  like  a  minstrel  whose  voice  never  grows  husky  nor  weary, 
nor  his  hands  tired  of  the  harp  he  holds  and  thrums. 

And  when  the  day  snuffs  out  his  light  and  falls  asleep,  the  river 
sings  on.  In  the  day  there  were  other  voices;  now  the  river  sings 
alone.  The  voice  of  the  waters  is  full  of  sorrow,  like  the  story  of  a 
broken  heart.  Sometimes  the  note  seems  to  me  like  a  dying  man 
who  makes  signs,  beckoning  you  near  with  a  world  of  intention  in  his 
eyes,  draws  your  ear  close  to  his  lips,  tries  to  frame  lips  to  the  words 
his  heart  would  speak,  but  at  the  best  his  words  are  incoherent  and  he 
dies  with  his  secret  unrevealed  or  half  revealed.  So  these  waters. 
Their  voices  are,  as  says  Longfellow: 

"Full  of  hope  and  yet  of  heart-break;" 

but  seem  to  cry,  "Hear  my  story,  hear,  hear  my  story!"  And  at  night, 
when  other  voices  hush  their  jargon,  then  the  waters  have  their  way. 
Their  day  is  night;  and  they  catch  stars  in  their  tangle  of  waters 
and  blur  their  light  and  seem  to  say,  "This  hour  is  mine,"  and  send 
up  their  mournful  voices  like  incense  through  the  darkness.  How 
sweet  it  is  to  hear  the  music  of  waters  come  through  the  lattices  of 
your  sleep  and  dreams  1  I  leave  my  window  open  and  draw  the  bed-head 
close  to  the  window-ledge,  so  that  in  my  score  of  wakings  in  the  night 
each  tone  of  the  singing  waters  may  tell  its  story  of  lament;  and  I 
whisper,  "I  thank  you  for  your  melody,"  and  fall  into  slumber  again. 
Nor  is  this  all  the  St.  Croix  can  offer,  though  this  is  much,  and 
enough  to  change  summer  into  a  holiday.  The  stream's  voice  suffices 
to  change  turmoil  into  quietness,  and  make  room  for  the  ineffable  pres- 
ence of  the  Christ  of  God.  Along  the  eastern  acclivities  running  south- 
ward from  the  falls,  spring  after  spring  gushes  out.  You  can  not  make 
an  inventory  of  them.  They  baffle  you.  Every  bank  has  its  fountain, 
and  I  sit  thus  and  write  of  them  with  the  voices  of  these  waters  on 
every  side.  One  bubbles  with  a  boyish  self-assurance;  another  sounds 
like  a  harp  heard  afar;  another  has  haunting  notes,  quiet  and  tender  as 
a  melody  half-forgotten,  so  that  I  am  compassed  about  with  music. 
Every  mossy  bank  is  a  cluster  from  which  nature  is  squeezing  crystal 
wines.  Here  are  moss,  and  fern,  and  shrub,  and  violet  leaves,  flower- 
less  now,  but  reminiscent,  all  huddled  here  in  quiet  and  hidden  neighbor- 

115 


liness.  Some  places,  the  silver  of  the  stream  gushes  a  fountain  which 
glasses  the  hillside  and  the  far-off  sky.  How  it  clatters  like  a  busy 
street,  or  laughs  cheerily  like  some  sunshiny  heart,  and  runs  over 
pebbles,  saying,  "I  go — but  I  tell  not  whither,"  and  stays  not  a  moment; 
for  the  hill  is  steep,  but  running  like  one  who  hears  a  friend  calling,  fills 
its  woodland  path  with  merry  voices  leaving  sweet  echoes  when  itself 
is  gone,  and  a  memory  in  my  heart  more  lasting  than  these  echoes  in 
this  shady  wood.  Other  rivulets  hide  themselves  as  in  modesty.  You 


SUNRISE   ON  THE   RIVER 

can  not  see  whence  they  come;  but  they  are  come.  Invisible  threads  of 
silver  are  braided  to  make  this  rivulet,  and  it  whispers  along  its  way, 
and  if  you  will  hear  its  voices  you  must  lean  down  on  the  mossy  bank  it 
loves,  lean  and  grow  glad;  for  sweet  as  a  child's  kiss  in  the  sleepy  night 
is  the  voice  of  this  silver  thread  of  waters.  Such  dainty  minstrelsy  I 
have  not  heard  since  I  lay  in  New  England  hills.  One  thing  only  is 
lacking  here,  just  one;  these  brooks  do  not  lose  themselves  in  a  tangle 
of  roots  and  grasses,  and  then  dash  out  suddenly  a  sweet  surprise;  but 
covetous  would  he  be  who  would  demand  more  than  is  here.  The 

116 


morning  walks  across  the  sky,  and  all  these  sunlit  hours,  these  limpid 
rivers  saturate  the  woods  with  their  music.  All  about  you  is  the  voice 
of  the  lute  of  the  rivulet ;  and  each  voice  seems  sweetest.  This  is 
God's  glade,  and  these  rivulets  are  a  troop  of  his  minstrels,  and  this 
long  day,  too  brief  by  many  hours  (for  it  is  noon  —  for  it  is  afternoon  — 
why  it  is  evening) !  I  have  been  heart  to  heart  with  God  ;  for  these  are 
God's  woods,  and  streams,  and  ferns,  and  sturdy  rocks,  and  river  banks, 
and  drowsy  winds  caught  in  the  thickets,  and  dainty  waterfalls  trem- 
bling on  eminences  or  precipices  of  pebble  or  root,  and  laughter  of 
eddies  —  and  all  are  parts  of  God's  thoughtfulness  for  us  whose  weari- 
ness slips  away  in  the  heaven  of  his  solitudes. 


THE  OTHER   SHORE 


117 


WHEN  AUTUMN  FADES 


WHEN  AUTUMN   FADES 


WHEN  AUTUMN  FADES 

When  autumn  fades,  and  from  the  windy  hill 
And  forest  glades  beside  the  quiet  rill 
The  splendors  waste,-  and  all  the  happy  trees 
Are  quite  defaced  of  beauty,  and  the  breeze 

Makes  deep  lament  with  laughter  quite  forgot, 
As  it  were  meant  for  threnody  and  not 
For  merry  mood:   and  when  the  blackbirds  fling 
Their  dusky  brood  across  the  sky  on  wing 

Toward  fields  remote,  and  wild  ducks  flying  high 
With  muffled  note  make  speed  across  the  sky, 
And  redbirds  blaze  through  naked  loneliness 
Of  woodland  ways :   and  full  of  deep  distress 

The  moaning  trees  where  beat  tumultuous  tides 
Of  angry  seas  whose  stormy  music  chides: 
And  all  the  ways  are  sown  with  withered  leaves 
And  all  the  days  are  dim  with  haze,  and  grieves 
The  wintry  wind,  and  the  year's  evening  shades 
Grow  dusk,  and  blind  the  storms.;  when  autumn  fades. 


121 


A  WALK  ALONG  A  RAIL- 
ROAD IN  JUNE 


A  WALK  ALONG  A  RAILROAD 
IN  JUNE 


SHE  season  was  mid-June.  The  region  was  a 
I  prairie.  The  place  was  a  five-mile  stretch  of 
railroad  running  eastward,  undeviatingly  as  the 
flight  of  an  arrow.  Landing  at  a  village  in  the 
early  morning,  with  three  hours  to  wait  for  my 
train,  the  out-of-doors  challenged  me  to  walk  to 
the  next  hamlet ;  and,  my  custom  being  never 
to  take  a  dare  from  nature  if  my  employment 
will  allow  me  leisure,  I  swung  out  right  gayly 
to  answer  the  challenge.  The  day  was  dustless, 
rains  having  sprinkled  field  and  road  and  gardens 
quite  recently;  the  skies  were  dimmed  with  a 
veil  of  cloud  not  dense  enough  to  obscure  the 
sun  nor  to  dim  the  blue  completely,  but  enough  to  calm  the  sunlight  into 
entire  pleasantness  for  a  walk  like  mine.  A  pleasant  wind  blew  from 
the  east  and  kept  the  track  unhesitatingly  as  a  locomotive,  while  I,  with 
the  butterflies  and  wild  bees,  drifted  from  side  to  side  as  flowers  and 
grasses  and  tangle  of  vines  invited  me. 

Now,  a  railroad  is  what  our  friend  Ruskin  railed  at  with  his  delight- 
ful spleen ;  and  the  logic  of  his  complaint  was  that  the  railroad  stood 
for  utility  and  John  Ruskin  stood  for  nature,  and  what  John  Ruskin 
stood  for  was  what  should  be.  Ruskin  had  all  the  sweet  dogmatism 
and  self-confidence  of  a  little  child.  I  like  his  love  of  field  and  flood ; 
more  still,  I  love  it,  but  scarcely  enjoy  his  vituperation,  though  put  into 
English  sweet  enough  to  make  even  scolding  charming,  nor  enjoy  it  at 
all  when  he  raves  against  those  modern  appliances  which  have  changed 
the  economic  world  and  us,  from  provincials  into  cosmopolites.  And 

127 


-  ..s 


beyond  this,  use  is  needful  as  beauty,  and 
more  needful,  if  all  the  truth  be  told.  Use 
and  beauty  must  not  be  thought  of  as  enemies, 
but  friends.  The  cooking  stove  is  quite  as 
essential  as  clematis.  They  cherish  no 
antipathy.  Use  is  lacking  in  the  picturesque ; 
but  drudgery  must  needs  be  for  the  world's 
bettering.  A  railroad,  while  anything  but 
«  beautiful,  is  the  chore-boy  of  civilization,  the 
stevedore  that  carries  our  burdens  from 
wharf  to  wharf  and  from  hold  to  dock,  and 
with  prospect  of  neither  emolument  nor  de- 
light serves  all  save  itself.  Such  service, 
free-handed  and  free-hearted,  always  compels 
my  regard.  I  half  venerate  it,  as  I  do  a 
mother  of  many  children,  whose  hands  are 
worn  to  scars  and  hardness  by  much  toiling 
for  the  ones  she  loves.  Who  serves,  God 
loves.  The  road  gives  its  wealth  of  labor  as 
uncomplainingly  as  a  mother  to  her  daughter. 
Let  no  jest  nor  sneer  be  directed  toward 
those  whose  sweaty  shoulders  bend  to  the 
burden  of  world's  work ;  let  us  rather  requite 
such  sturdy  toil  with  appreciation  which  is 
better  far  than  gold.  The  railroad  track  is 
to  me  the  embodiment  of  uncomplaining, 
unacknowledged  toil  whose  praises  are  in  no- 
body's mouth. 

However,  I  have  found  that  if  the  railroad 
is  itself  lacking  in  beauty,  it  affords  shelter 
for  the  beautiful.  Any  one  who  has  been 
much  out  of  door?  in  our  later  days,  knows 


how  beauty  of  tangled  thicket  and  room  for 
gathering  of  bloom  and  bird  are  growing  rarer ; 
for  are  not  the  straggling  fences  rotting  down 
and  giving  place  to  fences  of  wire,  which  leave 
no  least  protection  from  grazing  herd  or  flock, 
or  tramping  foot,  for  brier,  or  clump  of  grasses 
or  blackberry,  with  its  arch  of  vine  and  sweet, 
blinding  surprise  of  snow-white  blossoms?  But 
all  this  shelter  the  railroad  supplies,  and  calls  to 
the  homeless  garden  of  nature,  "  I  will  give  you 
room,"  and  makes  good  this  cordial  invitation. 
On  either  side  of  the  track  is  a  goodly  breadth 
given  over  to  nature.  A  ditch  dug  in  build- 
ing the  road-bed  gives  place  for  water  to  stand, 
and  where  water  stands  there  is  invitation  for 
flag  and  cat-tail  and  swamp-grasses ;  and  the 
embankment  gives  privilege  for  the  wild  rose  to 
hold  tryst  with  the  wild  bee,  and  makes  banks 
leaning  south,  where  in  the  new  springtime 
violets  may  stand  in  pools  of  blue,  and  grasses 
may  grow,  unafraid  of  the  lowing  herd.  If  you, 
friend,  have  never  known  how  dear  a  shelter  the 
barren  railroad  affords  nature's  refugees,  pray 
you  give  the  matter  heed. 

Five  miles  of  invitation  of  perfumed  June 
lie  before  me.  The  last  robin  of  my  journey 
calls  with  its  flute-note  from  the  fringes  of  the 
village.  He  hugs  the  town,  I  fear  me,  over- 
much, and  I  tremble  lest  his  morals  become 
corrupted  ;  ,but  he  eyes  me  from  his  barn-roof 
with  a  curious  look,  as  if  commiserating  the 
moneyless  traveler  who  must  plod  along  the 
track  instead  of  riding  on  the  train  or  going  on 
a  robin's  speeding  wings.  If  men  are  not  small 
folks  in  the  bird's  eyes,  I  miss  my  guess.  They 
have  a  right  to  feel  aristocrats,  who  have  wings 
and  know  how  to  fly.  The  skies  are  fair  high- 
ways for  treading;  and  I  piously  envy  all  winged 
things.  Sometimes,  I  fear  I  love  the  country 

129 


more  than  is  comely,  and  then  I  recall  I  do  not  love  it  so  much  as  God 
does  and  am  content.  My  march  this  fair  morning  was  as  a  king's 
triumph,  all  royal  things  coming  to  meet  me.  The  soft  winds  sweet 
with  rose  perfumes  welcomed  me  with  a  kiss  full  on  the  mouth  ;  vines 
reached  out  their  graceful  tendrils  my  way ;  a  meadow-lark  called  to  me 
from  a  nodding  red  clover  head ;  a  quail  invisible,  hid  somewhere  in 
meadow  or  hedgerow,  piped  in  his  cheerful  voice  across  a  cornfield  as  if 
to  intimate  he  was  where  he  had  full  right  to  be ;  the  talkative  sparrows 
chatted  along  the  way,  having  their  say  about  the  traveler  going  past 
with  his  arms  full  of  flowers ;  a  single  blackbird  with  his  hot  crimson 
epaulets  flung  by  me  as  in  high  dudgeon,  though  I  had  done  him  no 
earthly  harm.  This  way  is  poor  in  birds,  much  to  my  regret,  and  I 
know  not  why.  Blackbirds  should  have  been  here  in  garrulous  multi- 
tudes. Plovers  I  looked  for  and  found  none.  I  think  perhaps  this  is  a 
bird's  holiday  and  they  are  gone  from  home,  for  certainly  they  are  not 
here,  and  the  day  is  fair  and  belongs  to  them.  But  vegetation  there 
was  a  fortune  of.  The  spring  had  latter  rains,  and  all  things  had  the 
brilliancy  of  perpetuated  youth  upon  them.  Leaves  fairly  flashed  in  the 
light,  as  if  sparks  were  smitten  from  them.  Long  miles  of  grasses, 
rank  and  lush,  grew  nodding  to  the  wind.  On  either  side  were  fields 
planted  to  corn,  with  the  farmers  plowing  the  long  rows  of  emerald ;  or 
pastures  of  prairie  grass,  than  which  few  sights  are  fairer  to  the  eyes ; 
or  red  clover  fields  lent  modest  perfume  to  the  air,  for  few  odors  can 
compare  in  delicacy  with  those  wafted  from  the  red  clover  meadow,  so 
delicate  that  unless  the  flowers  are  in  masses  of  acres  in  breadth,  you 
will  not  get  the  fragrance  at  all.  Fields  of  oats  with  their  quick  green 
answered  to  the  wind,  and  a  wheatfield  with  a  faint  haze  of  harvest  on 
it  felt  the  goings  of  the  spring  wind.  Woods,  there  were  none.  Only 
a  willow  stooped  across  a  ravine  showing  where  was  hidden  water,  or  a 
planted  elm  waved  its  graceful  curved  plumes,  or  a  cottonwood,  which 
tree  I  profess  to  love  and  have  some  times  talked,  some  times  written 
my  affection,  not  being  content  with  a  single  declaration.  One  cotton- 
wood  I  stop  to  listen  to — and  indeed  what  one  of  them  do  I  not  stop  to 
listen  to? — for  the  rain  upon  their  roof  is  very  sweet  to  me,  and  their 
tearful  commotion  is  something  my  heart  always  remembers.  This 
tree  stood  along  a  field  edge  lifting  its  deep  green  into  the  air  in  a  manly 
fashion,  as  unashamed  to  front  the  sky,  and  through  its  branches  ran  the 
drift  of  autumn  rain,  and  I  closed  my  eyes  and  listened,  as  loath  to  pass  ; 
and  farther  off,  half  across  a  field,  a  group  stood  together  where  I  could 

130 


THE   LEANING   WILLOW 


hear,  as  they  half  whispered  their  rainy  colloquies.  Spring  it  was,  or 
early  summer,  but  they,  as  I  gathered,  were  speaking  about  autumn  and 
the  sere  leaf  and  the  last  late  rose  and  the  departure  of  the  swallows — 
and  who  could  blame  them  for  having  tears  in  their  voices  ? 

I  made  my  leisure  journey.  Naught  troubled  me  nor  hasted  me. 
The  time  was  God's  and  summer's  and  mine.  I  stopped  at  every 
pastoral  and  grew  inquisitive  at  every  stop.  Something  enticed  me 
everywhere.  Three  hours  I  had,  though  I  could  use  three  days.  One 
can  not  have  too  much  leisure  with  Nature.  She  is  coy  like  a  hermit 
thrush,  so  that  those  who  hasten  may  not  know  her;  but  I  sped  leisurely. 
Most  plants  along  the  road  I  knew,  some  I  had  not  seen,  or,  speaking 
exactly,  one,  and  that  made  me  glad,  because  it  is  so  good  to  make  a 
new  friend  among  the  flowers.  One's  life  is  infinitely  enriched  thereby. 
To  meet  old  friends  in  flowers  or  folk  is  delightful,  and  meeting  new  folk 
and  flowers  has  a  tang  of  gladness  also.  One  new  friend  among  birds 
or  flowers,  or  gentle  green  among  the  leaves — what  think  you  of  that, 
my  heart  ?  One  white  flower  I  met  this  day  I  had  not  met  aforetime, 
and  the  memory  of  its  dainty  beauty  lingers  caressingly.  Five-petaled, 
pure  white  as  a  blackberry  blosom,  growing  low  on  the  earth,  beckoning 
the  wind,  sheltered  by  the  grasses,  sometimes  a  few  feet  of  ground 
would  be  star-white  with  them,  sometimes  one  bloomed  solitary  like  a 
forgotten  life  some  one  had  died  and  left,  but  whether  single  or  in 
groups,  the  flower  was  dainty,  fair,  and  left  a  gentle  memory  to  my 
heart.  I  see  it  yet.  Along  the  track  were  no  rose  bushes  with  their 
frowsy  archings  and  interarchings,  and  had  there  been,  the  time  of 
roses  was  not  yet.  That  sweetness  was  to  be  an  anticipation.  Not  all 
flowers  bloom  at  once.  God  is  too  good  for  that.  He  sows  his  flowers 
through  all  the  lanes  of  spring,  summer,  autumn ;  and  I  love  him  for  it. 
But,  rose  bushes  being  absent,  rose  blooms  were  present  and  burned 
along  the  banks  or  flamed  in  the  grasses  like  sparks  from  a  hurrying 
engine.  They  were  inexpressibly  beautiful.  My  eyes  caressed  them, 
and  I  would  linger  over  every  flushed  face  I  saw,  as  if  it  were  the  last 
I  was  to  set  eyes  upon.  Seldom  more  than  six  to  nine  inches  high, 
they  took  you  by  surprise — by  a  sweet  surprise ;  and  they  were  always 
fair,  running  in  color  from  pure  white  to  deep  crimson,  each  seeming, 
as  I  saw  it,  fairer  than  its  sister,  as  each  child  in  a  family  circle.  Here 
a  single  flame  shot  like  a  firefly's  lamp,  there  a  bank  blushed  into  sud- 
den flame  with  them.  One  was  white  sprinkled  daintily  with  pink, 
another  was  bronzed  as  with  some  chaste  enamel,  another  pink  as  a 

133 


seashell,  so  delicate  you  feared  to  look  straight  at  it  lest  the  blush  die 
away  to  be  seen  no  more.  I  wished  I  were  painter  so  as  to  paint  them 
all;  but  could  I?  And  the  buds,  ready  for  flowering,  were  fairer  than 
the  flower,  and  had  moss  upon  them,  so  that  I  thought  I  had  found  a 
colony  of  God's  moss  roses  growing  wild.  When  spring  comes  round 
and  the  dwarf  roses  bloom,  go  you,  good  friend,  and  watch  for  them  as 
for  the  coming  of  a  longed-for  comrade ;  and  bring  some  of  the  love- 
liest away  with  you  and  and  press  them  in  a  book,  and  write  in  the  book 
where  you  found  them,  their  color,  when  you  gathered  them,  and  their 

sweet  capricious  ways, 
and  confess  you  love 
them,  whereat,  mayhap, 
they  may  learn  to  love 
you  in  retur n — w h o 
knows?  For  a  mile 
and  more  along  the 
banks  the  wild  parsnip 
was  swaying  to  the  touch 
of  every  wind — whorls  of 
gold  was  what  they  were 
— and  looking  across  a 
mile  of  them  was  look- 
ing at  a  pathway  of 
wrought  gold,  and  who 
was  I,  to  walk  on  gold- 
|  paved  streets  before  my 
time,  or  to  stand,  as 
sometimes  I  did,  when 
the  flowers  stood  tall,  in  golden  corridors?  Once,  just  once,  a  rivulet 
crossed  the  path.  I  saw  it  glint  among  the  grasses  and  come  slyly 
closer,  like  some  living  thing  filled  with  curiosity,  and  then  it  ran  under 
our  bridge  as  one  affrightened,  but  the  water  was  clear  and  intent  on 
its  journey.  If  I  spoke  to  it  in  passing,  it  either  heard  not,  or,  if  hear- 
ing, made  no  reply,  nor  even  gave  a  backward  look.  Perhaps  its  ret- 
icence was  to  hide  ignorance,  for  perchance  it  knew  not  whither  it  was 
going,  only  knowing  it  was  time  to  haste  like  a  truant  child  overtaken 
by  the  dark;  and  I  cried,  "You  are  going  to  the  sea,"  but  no  word  did 
it  reply,  only  there  was  audible  laughter  such  as  I  loved  to  listen  to ; 
and  I  seemed  to  be  bent  on  talking  to  the  rivulet,  for  I  said,  "You  are 

134 


THE  BRIDGE 


journeying,  but  I  too  am  journeying,  and  to  the  sea,  only  my 
sea  is  shoreless  and  remote,  and  toward  it   I   make  haste, 
though  oftener  I  fear  with  tears  than 
with  laughter.  Yours  is  the  better  way, 
laughing  onward  toward  the  sea  "     I 
crossed  a  group  of   shrubs  unknown 
to    me,  whose  leaves  were  of  such 
redness  as  to  stand  like  a  dull  flame 
in  the  midst  of   the  gay  greenery  of 
the    grasses    that   hedged    them   in. 
And  the   slough   grasses  are  always 
beautiful   to   my  eyes.     I    never  yet 
have    tired    of    them,  and  here  they 
grew  in  eager  luxuriance,  and  in  some 
parts  were  of  such  brilliant  green  as  if 
they  had  barely  wakened  from 
a   refreshing  winter  sleep,  and 
with    all  freshness   on   them,  like    a 
newly  awakened  child,  locked  at  you 
in  sweet  surprise.    The  grasses,  grown 
taller,  had  a  sedateness  and  sense  of  dig- 
nity such  as  I  have  sometimes  seen   in 
women.     Stately  they  were  and  drooping 
— all  bowed   as   soldiers  who  had  stood 
guard  all  night  and  were  sleeping  in  the 
day.     The    wind    came  and   caressed 
them,   but    they  woke    not   or   barely 
nodded  as  if   saying,  "  Let  me  sleep, 
let  me — "  and   the    sleepy  voice   fell 
asleep.     They  were  secret-keeping  like 
marsh  grasses  by  the  sea.     I  love  this 
waving   green  when  winds  drowse   or 
flurry  by,  and  the  grass,  somnolent  yet 
fluent,  answered   in   a  dream    to    this 
fond  caress,  and  I  feared  the  winds  might 
disturb  their  rest;  and  the  slumber  was  on 
them    when    the    wind    was    gone.     The 
crowning  glory  of  the  walk  was  the  blue  flags 


135 


BLUE  FLAGS 


(spiderwort).  They  and  I  were  old  friends,  though  I  had  never  known 
them  in  such  profusion,  for  they  stood  for  two  miles  and  more  in  solid 
ranks  on  both  sides  the  track.  You  do  not  know  how  beautiful  the  blue 
flag  is  till  you  have  seen  it  in  such  long  procession.  Standing  alone, 
this  flower  has  a  gawky  appearance,  and  when  seen  in  small  groups  this 
awkwardness  is  not  materially  lessened ;  but  when  seen  in  their  armies, 
where  on  looking  back  they  drift  like  blue  smoke  lying  low  along  the 
ground  and  for  miles — then  they  are  a  pageant  of  beauty  and  color.  I 
gathered  them  till  I  could  carry  no  more,  but  gathered  them  all  in  my 
heart.  Not  a  blue  flag  nodded  on  its  stem  when  my  love  had  passed 
by.  I  see  the  mass  of  color  and  delight  as  I  write,  as  I  did  the  day  I 
walked  in  the  midst  as  if  I  were  crowned  king  of  all  that  excellence; 
and  1  mistake,  if  for  all  the  days  of  my  life  I  shall  not  feel  as  if  on  a 
day  in  June  I  had  walked  in  a  royal  procession.  To  see  that  blue 
muster  in  the  early  summer  was  worth  going  mile  on  mile  to  see.  The 
violets  had  put  their  lights  out  weeks  ago,  and  here  is  a  flower  that 
holds  its  bloom  aloft  like  clustered  stars  of  blue,  as  if  violets  clustered 
on  the  umbels.  You  must  keep  close  to  the  ground  to  see  a  violet; 
but  these  flowers  hang  their  blue  aloft  like  a  light  and  there,  shines  blue 
as  the  midoceans.  There  they  stand,  sometimes  like  soldiers  in  ranks 
ready  for  war,  sometimes  they  spring  suddenly  out  of  the  dense  green 
of  the  swamp  grass  I  have  told  you  of,  and  you  see  no  stalk  of  flower 
at  all,  only  a  green  sea  waking  from  sleep  into  amethyst  with  downy 
centers  blue  as  the  petals  are  and  each  pistil  dipped  in  a  pot  of  gold  dust. 

One  thing  I  found  this  day  I  had  never  found  before,  and  that  was  a 
pure  white  flag  with  snow-white  center  and  the  pistil  tipped  with  gold. 
The  beauty  of  it  fairly  took  my  breath.  That  day  I  had  seen  flags  of 
every  hue  of  blue,  from  light  sky  blue  to  the  black  blue  of  ocean,  and 
some  with  only  a  haze  of  blue,  faint,  delicate,  remote  as  if  the  color 
were  an  afterthought;  but  this  blue  flag  blooming  cloud- white  was  quite 
beyond  me.  So  is  God  always  and  still  always  surprising  us. 

But  down  the  track  behind  me  I  see  a  cloud  of  smoke.  My  holi- 
day I  plainly  see  is  ended.  My  train  is  coming  and  is  no  laggard.  I 
must  leave  this  long  journey  of  gladness,  though  loath  as  ever  sailor  to 
quit  the  sea.  I  have  had  a  journey  in  the  land  of  dreams,  so  fair  they 
were.  I  had  walked  down  a  five-mile  stretch  of  railroad,  and  it  had 
been  as  if  I  had  wandered  inland  across  the  hills  of  God. 

136 


THE  WINDINGS  OF  A  STREAM 


THE  WINDINGS  OF  A  STREAM 


TREAMS  are  poor  geometers  and  are  in  ill  repute 
with  rigid  mathematicians.  The  mathematician 
has  engaged  himself  to  and  married  the  straight 
line;  and  a  straight  line  the 
stream  knows  nothing  of,  or 
knowing  of,  absolutely  refuses  to 
recognize.  I  am  proud  of  the 
stream.  It  may  not  be  mathe- 
matical, but  is  poetical,  which, 
with  all  deference  to  mathema- 
ticians, is  much  better.  Mathe- 
matics are  necessary;  poetry  is 
more  necessary.  God  is  both 

mathematician  and  poet;  but- such  combination  exists  only  in  him.  Men 
must  be  mathematician  or  poet;  and,  as  for  me,  I  will  join  hands  with 
the  poet  if  he  will  let  me. 

Every  water  course  refuses  (absolutely  and  without  reason,  like  a 
little  man)  to  go  on  section  lines.  I  have  watched  them  through 
many  years  and  have  never  found  a  stream  which  would  of  its  own 
accord  go  as  the  crow  flies.  Water  is  a  sad  gad-about.  It  has  no 
more  notion  of  sticking  to  a  road  than  a  dog  has  when  he  goes  .driving 
with  you.  In  short,  the  stream  has  a  mind  of  its  own,  like  a  little 
woman;  and  there  is  the  end  of  it.  You  can  not  argue  with  water. 
Like  a  woman,  it  goes  by  intuition;  but  its  ways,  like  a  woman's 
ways,  are  very  sweet  and  self-justificatory. 

Every  stream  is  a  poet.  Poets  are  born  so.  How  many  streams 
I  have  followed  toward  or  to  their  source !  What  wild  rollics  I  have 
had,  with  the  streams  laughing  at  me  with  wild  rollicking  laughter, 

141 


like  a  man  from  Kansas,  and  slapping  me  on  the  shoulder  like  a  man 
from  Nevada  I  In  the  mountains  (was  it  yesterday  or  this  forenoon?) 
what  boyish  delight  I  have  taken  in  going  uphill  in  August  with  a 
water-brook,  till,  with  spent  strength,  but  with  wild,  hilarious  spirits,  1 
have  laid  me  down  on  my  stomach  to  drink  waters  just  squeezed  from 
the  snow  drift.  Who  would  drink  wine  after  such  elixir?  How  could 
he?  And  the  laughter  of  the  water — God  tuned  its  singing  as  he  did  the 
singing  of  the  winds;  and  there  is  no  complaint  of  flatting  or  sharping, 
no  defective  tones,  only  music,  music,  music! 

I  have  followed  streams  on  mountains  and  on  prairie  and  through 
thickets  of  Minnesota  and  through  Wisconsin  pines,  and  through  the 
dreary  foot-hills,  and  through  lonely  sage-grown  desert,  and  through  the 
high  meadows  of  Colorado,  standing  above  the  summits  of  Tennessee 
mountains,  and  in  meadows  in  New  England  hills,  where  the  streams 


beguiled  me  back  into  the  woodlands  and  through  them  to  where  be- 
yond still  other  meadows  lay,  through  grasses  and  out  of  sight  under 
grasses  till  you  could  only  tell  the  water  was  not  lost  or  was  not  asleep 
by  leaning  ear  on  the  grass,  and  hearing  the  chimes  of  it  sweet  as 
vesper  bells  in  the  days  gone  by;  and  in  the  Berkshire  Hills  of  Massa- 
chusetts and  the  Derbyshire  district  in  England,  and  where  in  an  island 
a  runnel  hurried  to  the  sea  as  it  were  to  keep  tryst  with  her  he  loved, 
and  many  a  rivulet  near  the  seashore  where  the  waters  lingered,  as  if 
now  that  the  great  sea  was  so  near  it  feared  to  take  the  last  step  of  the 
journey  and  have  not  any  home  on  land  forever,  and  the  salt  tides  of 
sea  ran  up  and  took  the  rivulet  on  its  breast  and  bore  it  back  far  up 
where  the  marsh  grasses  floated  upstream  with  the  tides, — I  have  seen 
water  courses  everywhere,  but  not  one  have  I  seen  not  sinuous  as  a 
swallow's  flight. 

Streams  flow  to  the  point  of  least  resistance  (really,  I  feel  proud  of 
that  sentence.     It  has  a  weighty  sound.     I  feel  scientific.     If  I  am  not 

142 


on  guard  I  will  speak  of  "environment"  next — lest  I  do,  let  me  hasten 
on,  tightening  my  belt  for  speed);  and  in  consequence  their  goings  are 
a  series  of  sweet  lawlessnesses.  A  bright  stream  in  Syria  was  named 
Meander,  and  from  its  multitudinous  wanderings  we  keep  the  word 
"meander"  to  mean  a  journey  in  winding  ways.  The  reason  why  every 
stream  is  beautiful  is  because  every  stream  is  bent  on  meandering. 
Lovers  can  not  keep  to 
a  sidewalk.  They  give 
scant  attention  to  direc- 
tion. A  stream  is  the 
same.  I  think  it  has  no 
compass  and  does  not 
know  it  can  steer  by  the 
pole  star.  I  rejoice  in 
its  ignorance.  I  am  right 
glad  it  has  no  theodolite 
and  chain,  but  has  a 
sweet  unreasonableness 
and  pouting  self-will  and 
strict  inattention  to  rules 
and  advices — the  stream 
"  doeth  whatsoever  it 
will."  Who  but  God 
taught  the  waters  this 

quaint  unreasonableness?  Every  step  the  stream  takes  is  a  deviation. 
Being  in  no  hurry  it  may  be  as  leisurely  as  a  summer  afternoon. 
Streams  are  in  no  sweaty  haste,  but  with  blunt  Walt  Whitman,  may 
loaf  and  invite  their  soul ;  and  so  it  happens  that  they  will  spend  a  half 
day  in  your  field  when  they  might  get  beyond  it  in  a  jiffy.  I  love  their 
loitering.  The  streams  go  nosing  around,  digging  under  banks,  stop- 
ping to  demolish  a  sandbar,  then  waiting  to  build  a  sandbar,  putting  a 
curve  on  everything  as  a  rainbow  does,  building  little  peninsulas  where 
a  wild  flower  may  root,  laving  the  roots  a  sycamore  has  inadvertently 
thrust  too  near  the  stream,  dawdling  around  in  pools,  chasing  its  own 
bubbles  as  a  kitten  runs  after  its  own  tail  (poor  silly),  making  froth  at 
the  edge  of  some  root  which  has  with  temerity  walked  out  across  the 
stream,  pouring  down  its  little  world  of  waters  from  a  play-ledge  of  rocks, 
and  so  has  dug  a  little  hollow  where  the  waters  stay  when  the  stream 
runs  dry,  running  around  and  building  an  island  so  they  may  study 

143 


THROUGH   LONG  GRASSES 


geography  without  going  to  school,  making  a  bold  maneuver,  like  a 
skillful  general,  and  swinging  back  so  far  as  to  construct  a  huge  penin- 
sula, and  within  a  three-feet  of  flowing  back  into  itself,  when  in  strange 
willfulness  turning  off  in  a  new  direction  to  go  clean  to  the  back  of  the 
hill,  where  the  rocks  jut  out,  laughs  at  them  for  being  naked,  and 
chasing  sunlight  along  its  way  and  then  drowsing  within  the  shadows 
(for  the  heat  is  too  intense  to  enjoy  long  at  a  time),  thus  loitering,  then 
running  off  in  great  speed  as  if  to  do  an  errand  forgotten,  then  off  into 
another  direction  out  into  the  open  where  grass  is  growing  and  willows 
dream;  then  down  where  the  banks  are  high  and  steep,  and  where  no 
sunlight  is,  and  then  dodges  like  children  when  they  play  blindman's 
buff:  and  the  upshot  of  all  this  is — the  stream  has  written  a  poem  of 
journeys. 

Never  walk  across  lots  when  a  stream  is  in  your  neighborhood 
(unless  you  are  going  on  an  errand  for  your  wife.  Then  stay  not  on 
the  ordering  of  your  going),  but  follow  the  stream  as  the  sycamores 
do.  You  shall  find  enchantment  such  as  Merlin  the  mage  knew  not; 
and  you  will  be  led  afield  where  the  voices  will  make  you  glad  and 
where  every  new  step  will  be  new  delight,  as  with  Merlin  following 
"The  Gleam." 


144 


FOUR  SEASONS=ONE  YEAR 


FOUR  SEASONS=ONE  YEAR 


HAT  the  good  God  of  the  Out-of- Doors  could 
have  made  five  seasons  or  six  is  quite  among 
his  possibles,  though  not  of  ours ;  yet  am  I ,  for 
one,  content  that  he  made  us  four.  That  is 
enough.  Four  is  his  sacred  number ;  and 
sacred  the  quaternion  of  the  seasons  surely  is. 
Think  through  the  four  seasons  as  if  your 
thought  were  an  arrow-flight  speeding  from 
spring  through  summer,  autumn,  winter  into 
spring  again,  and  feel  how  adequate  the  journey 
|p  I  was.  Spring  was  birthday,  summer  love- 
_v  |j?  I  making,  fall  the  glow  and  glory  of  the  day  of 

If  Jr          I  life,   winter   the   battle    mood    and    madness. 

mm    Fa :  »' "         fay 

*'-  I   Beginning,  wooing,  enjoying,  fighting  with    a 

world  of  foes,  what  besides  is  there  in  life? 
Four  seasons  are  enough.  They  engulf  the  year  in  their  glorious  ocean 
as  reefs  are  swallowed  in  the  high  tides  that  caress  and  kiss  and  make 
tiger  springs  of  furious  passion.  Four  seasons — I  will  thank  God  for 
that  mercy  also.  They  are  none  too  many,  not  two  nor  one,  but  just 
enough;  like  the  number  of  children  at  anybody's  house,  never  one 
too  many. 

I  want  no  climate  where  the  seasons  are  reduced  to  two  or  one.  A 
year-long  winter  does  not  suit  my  thought  nor  me,  nor  does  a  year-long 
summer.  One  season  to  fill  the  year  is  too  sedate.  I  like  not  its 
narcotic ;  for  it  makes  the  faculties  drowse  like  lotus-eating,  whereas 
Nature,  if  we  are  to  make  much  of  it,  must  be  watched  with  undi- 
minished  interest  and  appetite.  A  drowsy  man  might  as  well  be  asleep 
for  all  the  good  he  gets  from  company  or  landscape.  Did  you  ever  try 
to  carry  your  part  of  a  conversation  when  you  were  nodding  and  napped 

149 


£l& 


between  your  own  fragments  of  dialogue  ?  It  is  a  grief 
to  me  to  think  of  my  lapses  of  this  sort,  when,  though 
in  goodly  company,  a  too  long  journey  in  the  wind  had 
blown  awakement  from  my  eyes  and  spirits  and  I 
drowsed  like  an  August  afternoon.  O,  it  was  griev- 
ous! And  to  wake  with  an  intellectual  summersault 
and  join  blithely  in  the  conversation,  as  if  my  silence 
had  arisen  from  cogitation  well-nigh  lost  in  the  morass 
of  that  fen — too  profound  thought !  As  I  think  of  my 
stealth  of  reapproach  to  convivial  conversation  and  of 
my  vivid  remorse  over  the  outraged  rites  of  hospital- 
ity, I  blush  while  setting  these  sad  confessions  down, 
but  rejoice  that  these  sleepy  moods  of  mine  were  ab- 
normal, fitful,  isolated.  I  am  usually  awake,  my  blinds 
up  and  my  doors  open.  The  plover  will  not  call  and 
I  not  hear,  nor  the  veery  cry  nor  the  crickets  chirr, 
nor  the  dirty-faced,  ragged  lad  sit  astride  an  impossi- 
ble landscape  of  toppling  habitation  and  I  not  see  his 
ragged  glee  and  rejoice.  No,  I  am  not  customarily 
asleep ;  I  am  usually  awake  and  have  been  known  to 
be  wide  awake.  I  will  make  my  prayer  to  be  pre- 
served from  the  drowsy  spirit ;  and  that  my  prayer 
may  be  the  surer  of  answer,  I  would  wish  to  live  in  a 
four-seasoned  year.  Give  me  the  seasons'  cycle  to 
keep  my  life  awake.  "When  will  the  birds  come?" 
that  is  springtime's  question.  "When  will  the  birds 
cease  their  singing?"  that  is  summer's  query.  "When 
will  the  birds  tire  of  us  and  be  gone?"  that  is  autumn's 
sad  question.  "When  will  the  dull  clouds  shake  their 
mantles  and  fleck  the  world  with  snow?"  that  is 
winter's  surly  interrogative.  Thought  has  little  room 
for  sleep  if  the  four  seasons  be  kept  pace  with,  seeing 
they  are  so  swift  of  foot,  and  outrun  the  speed  of 
mourning  doves  in  autumn  flights.  Though  he  said 
little  enough  about  his  subject,  goodness  knows, 
Thomson  wrote  about  the  four  seasons.  But  in  the 
mere  writing  about  them  was  a  virtue,  specially  in 
days  when  men  cared  so  little  for  any  season  as 
Thomson's  contemporaries  did.  We  must  never 
forget  that  he  "took  his  pen  in  hand"  to  celebrate 
150 


the  journeys  of  the  year.  Some  people  are  virulently  insistent  on  tell- 
ing which  season  they  like  best.  Such  people  vex  me.  I  hope  I  may 
be  forgiven  for  my  seeming  ill-nature,  but  honestly,  what  is  the  need  of 
choosing?  They  are  all  ours.  "All  are  yours."  The  round  of  the 
seasons,  glad,  sunlit,  sweaty,  shivering,  all  are  mine.  I  own  the  sum- 
mer's sultry  noon  and  winter's  surly  storm  winds,  so  why  choose?  Who 
owns  mountain  and  valley  need  not  vex  himself  to  select  between  land- 
scapes where  he  owns  the  whole.  These  "choosy"  folks  are  like  those 


who  persist  in  asking  which  fair  woman  in  Shakespeare  is  loveliest. 
They  miss  the  mark.  Each  one  of  Shakespeare's  women  is  loveliest 
in  what  she  is  and  for  what  she  is.  We  do  not  always  need  to  select. 
Take  what  comes.  What  call  for  anybody  to  choose  one  star  of  the 
firmament?  I  love  them  every  one.  Not  one  can  be  spared  from  the 
wide  pasture-lands  of  heaven.  Let  each  star  trim  his  lamp  and  burn 
on,  and  may  no  single  light  blow  out,  that  is  all  we  ask.  We  must  not 
select,  but  embrace  (I  am  speaking  not  of  women,  but  of  stars).  Or 
why  should  we  be  driven  to  the  wall  by  "Which  is  your  favorite  flower?" 
I  will  not  answer  that  question,  although  I  know,  because  the  asking  is 
an  impertinence.  Woods  and  meadows,  both  are  mme,  and  all  the 
flowers  that  haunt  springtime  woodlands  and  ravines  or  flaunt  their  gold 

153 


on  autumn  hills,  if  there  is  one  I  do  not  love,  I  wonder  which  it  is. 
Homely  flowers,  half  weed  and  more,  and  scant  in  color,  or  lacking  in 
form,  impress  me  as  homely  women — I  am  sorry  for  them ;  but  their 
attempt  at  beauty  pleases  me.  And  the  flowers,  there  are  Maud  Mul- 
lers,  barefoot  and  tanned,  but  they  are  dear  to  me.  I  like  their  rustic 
simplicity.  I  will  not  choose  so  much  as  I  will  gather  and  enjoy  all  the 
flowers  which  tangle  in  Nature's  garden  through  the  bewildering  year. 


I  am  so  with  the  seasons.  No  one  shall  decoy  me  into  expressing 
preference  now.  What  I  may  do  later  is  immaterial.  To-morrow  I 
may,  but  it  is  not  to-morrow  now.  This  is  to-day .  To-day  is  to-mor- 
row in  bud,  and  buds  bloom  if  the  frosts  do  not  scar  their  immature 
loveliness.  But  this  I  hold  to  as  to  the  dirty,  chubby  hands  of  my  little 
children ;  by  and  by  I  shall  hold  their  hands  as  youths,  and  still  further 
on,  if  God  shall  loan  me  so  many  days,  I  shall  hold  their  hands  as  man 
and  woman.  Which  shall  I  love  the  more  ?  the  baby  hands  or  the 
lad's  hands  or  the  scarred  hands  of  manhood?  I  will  not  answer; 
whether  I  could  is  inconsequent.  I  will  hold  their  hands  all  these 

154 


AUTUMN 


days,  and  in  that  land  where  daylight  lasts  a  long,  glad  while  I  shall 
hold  them  still.  I  need  not  choose  and  will  not.  The  hands  are  mine ; 
say  that,  my  heart,  and  hold  thy  peace. 

So  the  four  seasons,  I  would  sing  a  madrigal  for  each.  Let  The- 
ocritus or  some  good  woodsman,  who  loves  to  brush  the  dew  from  the 
stooping  grasses  of  the  early  morning,  let  him  sing  a  roundel  for  each 
season  as  it  comes ;  and  mind  you,  singer,  spare  no  pains,  sing  sweetly 
and  shame  the  mockingbird  when  he  sings  his  "dropping  song,"  what 
time  he  wooes  and  tosses  wildly  like  a  jet  of  salt  sea  spray  to  the  rapture 
of  his  own  music. 

"Sing  me  the  song  again! 

The  wild,  sweet  notes  that  thrill  my  heart  with  bliss  : 
Quick  throbbing  now  with  passionate  disdain, 
Now  falling  soft  as  evening  breeze  s  kiss. 
Sing  me  the  song  again  ! 

Repeat  the  wondrous  tune  ! 
The  full  broad  glory  of  the  perfect  moon, 
The  pearly  glimmer  of  the  clustering  leaves, 
The  ghostly  shadows  of  the  night's  high  noon, 

My  listening  soul  perceives. 

Repeat  the  wondrous  tune! 

-KATE  MILLIARD. 


ON  WINTER  PANES 


' 


ON  WINTER  PANES 

In  winter  days  on  window  panes 

Fair  summers  dream  their  gladness  o'er, 
And  grow  dim,  shadowy,  restful  lanes 

Of  elm-tree  and  of  sycamore. 


/  watch  the  glass,  and  watching  see 
Dear  summers  flushed  with  radiant  June 

And  hear  the  song  bird  wild  with  glee, 
And  insects  drone  their  drowsy  tune. 

I  see  far  mountains  wrappea  in  blue 
And  clouds  that  drift  along  the  sky, 

And  valleys  where  with  variant  hue 

The  wild  flowers  bloom  and  blooming  die 


/  see  the  shaggy  mountains  throw 
On  high  their  plumes  of  oak  and  pine, 

And  roses  in  hid  gardens  grow 
Their  garlands  ruddy  as  old  wine. 


On  winter  panes!     There  summer  springs 
Like  Lark  into  deep  skies  of  blue, 

And  lifts  itself  on  singing  wings 

From  meadow  nest  begemmed  with  dew. 


Without,  the  winter  blast  sings  loud 
And  trumpets  like  an  angry  bard; 

Within,  spring  with  its  wind  and  cloud 
Drifts  incense  sweet  as  precious  nard. 


WALKING  TO  MY  FARM 


WALKING  TO  MY  FARM 


>HE  date  is  October  four  and  the  place 
Kansas,  when  I,  a  city  man  (0  the  pity 
of  it!)  land  at  a  siding  on  a  hilltop  to 
take  a  day  apart  from  the  city  calendar 
and  rest  my  heart  in  the  country  quiet, 
away  from  the  huckster,  with  his  strident 
vociferations ;  away  from  the  ragman, 
with  his  highly-developed  theories  of  eco- 
nomics and  his  equally  highly-developed 
lungs;  away  from  the  jangle  of  street 
cars  and  the  ceaseless  grind  of  wagon- 
wheels  in  their  industrious  pursuits ;  away 
from  the  blue-coated  policeman,  with  his 
vigilant  "  Move  on,  there!"  enforced  with 
his  uplifted  billy;  away  from  the  train- 
caller,  with  his  nasal  "Nail  aboard  for — 
thu  Santa — Fe — for  Topeka.  Santa  Fe, 
San  Francisco  and  the  Philippines  train  on — the  third  track:  Nail 
aboard;"  and  then,  in  a  lower  and  confidential  voice  adds,  "The  Santa 
Fe  is  now  ready."  Away  from  this  jargon  without  the  courtesy  of  a 
good-bye ;  for  I  slipped  off  as  if  trying  to  avoid  an  officer ;  and  here  I  am 
on  the  siding,  with  the  day  before  me  and  no  wagon  grinding  along  the 
pavement,  nor  any  street  car  clanging  at  me  with  its  virago  bell ;  here, 
with  autumn's  quietness  about  me  and  the  day  before  me,  My  heart, 
carpe  diem.  Enjoy,  enjoy  this  day. 

And  I  will.  I  shall  walk  to  my  farm.  Those  who  always  ride  miss 
a  good  share  of  delight  if  their  way  leads  through  the  country.  Flowers 
and  leaves  and  pastorals  must  be  seen  close  at  hand.  Nature  says 

169 


"Come  nearer."  Bike  riders  do  not  see  the  country,  nor  do  buggj 
and  horseback  riders.  Be  leisurely  and  walk.  Dally,  loiter,  poke  along, 
putter,  or,  if  you  like  not  these  words  get  a  word  you  do  like,  only  let 
the  word  express  delayed  and  loving  motion,  the  sort  of  leisureliness  a 
brook  knows,  running  when  it  feels  like  running,  drowsing  when  it  has 
a  drowsy  mood,  in  silvern  basins  where  sun  and  shadows  meet,  shadows 
to  woo  to  slumber,  sun  to  stoop  and  kiss  the  waters  awake.  So  the 
brook  loiters.  Do  you,  friend,  when  and  if  you  would  see  an  autumn 
landscape  do  the  like.  Choose  your  word  to  fit  that  motion  and  fit 
your  goings  to  the  word. 

The  autumn  wind  slows  to  a  saunter  coming  up  the  long  ravine. 
Purple  asters  (and  I  have  seldom  if  ever  seen  them  so  royal  as  this 
fall)  cluster  in  flocks  of  loveliness.  Black-eyed  Susans  had  in  coyness 
shaded  their  faces  till  they  looked  like  buttercups  long  delayed  in 
blooming,  months  past  due,  but  keeping  faith  at  last.  Now  and  then 
morning-glories,  with  beauty  of  leaf  and  tendril  and  bell-shaped  flower, 
stray  and  bloom,  many  of  them  being  so  deep  a  pink  as  to  approach 
the  glow  of  flame.  Iron  weed  stands  on  its  dignity  (as  usual)  unbend- 
ing, as  people  I  have  known,  with  its  surly  purple.  Sumacs  were  dying, 
but  this  autumn  have  the  fresh  green  of  spring,  so  that  here  is  a  vivid 
green  good  for  eyes  to  look  upon.  Wild  grapes  hang  in  purple  bunches, 
sometimes  in  the  shadow  of  their  own  leaves,  rare  as  arabesques,  but 
the  grape  leaves  are  turning  brown  as  tired  of  this  long  daylight  of 
summer  and  will  soon  be  quit  of  it.  For  days  past  now  they 

"Have  been  half  in  love  with  easeful  Death, 
Caird  him  soft  names  in  many  a  mused  rhyme."'' 

Oaks  have,  somo  of  them,  the  dull  browns  of  winter  save  those  glossy 
greens  that  so  well  become  the:n,  fairly  flashing  in  the  sun  when  the 
wind  tosses  them  into  momentary  perturbation  like  play  shields  used  in 
fairy  tournaments.  A  distance  in  the  background  against  a  hill,  sumacs 
stand  in  clumps,  crimson  as  flushed  sunsets.  I  am  a  good  lover  of  the 
sumac.  In  the  summer  its  leaves  are  so  glossy  and  its  fronds  so  beau- 
tiful, and  in  late  summer  its  bunches  of  crimson  berries  are  held  on 

high  with  such  loyal  pride 
as  if  they  were  a  lady's 
favor  to  be  worn  on 
a  knight's  helmet,  and 
those  berries  covered 


thicker  with  frost  than  barn  roof  in  October,  and  when  the  berries  ripen 
to  hang  for  the  winter  with  their  dull,  coal-glow  red  and  these  frosts 
still  unmelted  by  this  glowing  heat,  I  watch  the  wonder  and  the  beauty 
of  it  with  joy  unconcealed.  What  is  the  sumac  that  God  should  lavish  so 
much  glory  on  it?  And  at  the  last,  before  the  fronds  fall,  sumacs  build 
their  bonfires  on  the  hills  and  keep  them  burning  through  many  nights 
and  days,  for  with  them  as  with  good  lives  "at  eventide  it  shall  be 
light;"  for  sumacs,  which,  as  you  watch  them  at  sunset  on  a  night,  will 
the  next  morning  be  naked  as  dull  death,  only  beneath  them  is  a  bed  of 
living  coals  which  shall  soon  be  ashes.  How  the  sumacs  burn  on  this 
hillside!  In  a  pasture  beside  my  path  as  I  saunter  down  the  ravine  a 
herd  of  calves  lie  under  the  shadow  of  a  courteous  elm  (and  has  any 
tree  more  courtesy  of  shade  than  the  elm?)  ruminating  in  their  care- 
free leisureliness  which  no  creatures  save  the  kine  know.  A  crow 
(quite  alone)  goes  soaring  aloft  (crows  seldom  soar — they  fly,  nor  often 
fly  high;  this  crow  is  soaring,  and  far  up)  and  I  accost  him  (country 
style,  without  introduction)  with  a  hoarse  "Ha,  kha,  caw,"  to  which  he 
pays  scant  heed,  though  I  think  he  deflects  his  course  just  a  trifle  to 
see  what  manner  of  crow  this  free-mannered  bird  may  be,  and  a  little 
later  calls  in  his  catarrhal  voice  (he  should  consult  a  specialist)  "Ha, 
ha,  ha,  kha! "  and  I  am  well  repaid  for  my  pertness.  Here  are  no 

"Fast-fading  violets  covered  up  in  leaves." 

Would  there  were.  But  violets  are  one  with  the  spring  that  brought 
them. 

I  am  come  to  where  a  clump  of  trees — willow,  hickory,  walnut,  elm, 
oak — with  their  fast-falling  leaves  carpet  the  grass,  and  hazels  with  gold 
purses  full  of  nuts  lean  tantalizingly  near,  and  a  runnel  builds  a  toy  bank 
for  a  divan.  Here  I  take  mine  ease  at  mine  inn  and  break  bread  with 
myself  and  watch  the  cattle  going  with  their  ample  leisure  down  to  the 
spring  to  drink,  and  eying  me  with  a  quizzical  "You  are  lost,  and 
who  will  find  you?"  and  going  on  with  never  an  offer  of  bovine  help. 
Meantime  I  sit  and  listen  to  leaf  fall  and  catch  the  autumn-leaf  per- 
fumes and  hear  the  moan  of  the  winds  passing  through  the  tree  tops 
or  curling  the  brown  leaves  in  miniature  fury,  and  while  the  wind  makes 
its  music  I  read  Keats's  "Ode  to  the  Nightingale."  Maurice  Thompson 
was  right  in  saying  this  ode  should  be  read  out  of  doors,  and  I  shall 
add,  as  my  contribution  to  his  advice,  it  should  be  read  Out-of-Doors 
and  in  autumn.  To-day  is  the  day.  The  poem  has  the  odors  of  leaf 

171 


fall.  T  is  as  lonely  as  an  autumn  night,  when  you  hear  only  the  falling 
of  the  leaves  to  disturb  the  hush  of  darkness.  Keats  was  stableboy, 
but  deserted  the  stable  for  the  blue  sky  and  the  Out- 
of-Doors,  which  was  where  he  belonged,  for  all  who 
are  familiar  with  our  poets  must  know  that 
Keats  is  one  of  our  chief  pastoral  poets.  He 
loves  and  sees  nature,  and,  without  stammer- 
ing, tells  what  he  saw.  Theories  of  beauty 
may  limp,  but  beauty's  self  is  as  sure  of  foot 
as  daylight,  and  as  fleet  of  foot  as  morning. 
Those  who  frequent  Out-of- Doors  may  have 
beauty  for  ashes — an  exchange  worth  mak- 
ing. And  Keats  had  made  this  exchange. 
He  had  often  been 

'  7w  some  melodious  plot 
Of  beechen  green,  and  shadows  numberless," 

and  had  in  "  sun-burnt  mirth  "  longed 

"For  a  beaker  full  of  the  warm  South, 
With  beaded  bubbles  winking  at  the  brim, 
And  purple- stained  mouth," 

and  heard  the  nightingale  a-singing 

•  'Perhaps  the  self-same  song  that  found  a  path 
Through  the  sad  heart  of  Ruth,  when  sick  for  home, 
She  stood  in  tears  amid  the  alien  corn  and  wept. 

Thy  plaintive  anthem  fades 
Past  the  near  meadows,  over  the  still  stream, 
Up  the  hill- side;  and  now  'tis  buried  deep 

In  the  next  valley  glades" 

So  Keats  sings,  and  so,  under  the  trees, 
with  heart  set  to  leaf -fall,  I  read. 

And  here,  while  the  light  sifts  down  drowsily 
through  the  gorgeous  leaves,  as  if  loath  to  leave 
their  glad  glow,  and  leaves  fall  in  leisurely  fash- 
ion, as  doing  it  for  their  own  delight,  while  birds 
come,  and  with  head  leaning  pertly  on  one  side, 
twitter  "Who  are  you  and  what  are  you  doing  here  ?" 
The  leaves  rustle.  The  wind  takes  occasional  gusts  and  then  sits  down 
for  rest,  as  I  do.  The  clouds  are  bonnie,  bonnie.  When  did  I  learn  to 

172 


love  the  clouds,  and  did  I  teach  myself  or  did  John  Ruskin  teach  me? 
No  matter.  I  think  it  was  bom  with  me,  like  loving  my  mother,  or 
being  hungry  for  sight  and  hearing  of  the  sea.  But  anyway  I  love  the 
clouds  and  to-day  they  would  make  a  dullard  love  them.  They  are  so 
high,  gauzy,  tenuous.  Those  high  cirrus  clouds  nobody  ever  painted  so 
well  as  Turner,  because  nobody  ever  saw  them  so  well.  Seeing  comes 
before  painting.  There  is  a  chronology  in  production.  These  clouds 
this  day  are  diaphanous,  remote,  leisurely,  out  a-strolling  like  myself. 
I  wonder  if  they  have  a  farm  they  are  walking  to?  No  one  need  giggle 


SHADOWS 

as  if  I  were  not  walking  to  my  farm.  Because  I  am  sitting  around 
and  reading  Keats  and  watching  clouds  and  herds  of  cattle  and  leaves 
is  no  sign  I  am  not  walking  to  my  farm.  To  rest  is  to  get  ready  for 
walking.  This  business  is  all  of  a  piece.  I  am  on  my  way  to  my  farm. 
But  where  the  clouds  are  going,  with  their  slow  step,  I  do  not  now  say, 
not  knowing,  only  they  are  taking  their  time.  But  nobody  could  paint 
them.  Each  one  in  all  the  fleecy  multitudes  has  a  new,  fleeting  loveli- 
ness. God  loans  them  one  divine  form,  and  that  only  for  a  moment, 
and  then  changes  it  to  another.  How  rich  God  is  in  patterns,  which 

173 


THE   CROWS    NEST 


neither  tapestries  nor  lace  can  ever  hope 
to  emulate  !  And  this  sunlight,  dimmed 
but  not  gray,  half  wakes,  half  sleeps,  and 
gives  a  light  as  of  sunlight  turned  down 
as  some  study-lamp,  and  so  gives  a  mild, 
sweet  glow  to  gladden  the  eyes.  I  must 
go  now.  I  put  my  book  in  my  pocket. 
So,  I  feel  a  scholar;  and  down  the  ra- 
vine with  desultory  steps  I  go.  The  wind 
begins  to  walk  with  me  and  laughs  sadly 
amidst  a  glow  of  leaves.  The  crickets 
are  fiddling,  though  I  do  not  quite  know 
the  tune;  but  I  am  not  musical,  which 
is  no  fault  of  theirs.  A  rabbit  slouches 
through  a  thicket  and  eyes  me  shyly  and 
ducks  into  the  briers;  and  a  redbird  calls 
with  a  voice  of  flame  from  his  ruby 
throat.  A  cooing  dove  (just  one)  moans 
for  a  minute  and  is  still.  The  corn- 
fields stand  half  gray,  half-golden-green, 
resting  against  the  coming  rain  and  tem- 
pests. Apple-trees  stand  with  flashes  of 
red  fruit  through  their  branches  and 
leaves,  for  apple-trees  are  brave  folk  to 
retain  their  leaves  till  the  last  minute. 
Only  the  suckers  of  oak-trees  hold  them 
longer  with  flame  of  anger  because  the 
winter  comes.  A  little  child  is  gather- 
174 


ing  walnuts  under  my  trees  with  his  hands  dyed  with  walnut  juice,  as 
mine  were  when  I  was  a  boy;  and  a  bluejay  is  stealing  my  acorns  and 
hiding  them  (he  is  a  merry  thief  who  steals  for  the  love  of  stealing,  for 
he  forgets  where  he  has  hid  his  plunder) ;  and  blackbirds  are  making 
tumult  in  the  tree-tops,  talking  all  at  once,  and  though  I  do  not  profess 
familiarity  with  their  dialect  I  catch  enough  to  know  they  are  planning 
to  leave  my  woods,  for  which  I  am  sorry  enough.  Now  they  take  long 
gyrations  and  swift,  framing  a  black  cloud  like  gathering  tempest,  and 
then  settle  down  with  a  choppy  kind  of  laughter.  To-night  they  will  go 


to  sleep  in  the  tree-tops,  but  in  the  morning  they  will  be  gone ;  for  in  the 
night,  down  some  long  stream's  windings,  they  will  have  haled  to  a  sunlit 
land  where,  instead  of  fallen  leaves,  flowers  perfume  the  air.  Than 
these  night  migrations  of  the  birds  nature  has  no  stranger  doing  and  no 
sadder. 

And  I  trudge  along  the  highway  like  a  tramp;  but  the  moment  I  set 
foot  on  my  farm  I  strut  like  a  turkey  en  route  to  thanksgiving.  I  am 
here.  I  walked  here.  I  knew  I  was  walking  when  I  was  sitting  in  the 
leaf-fall  and  dreaming  awhile.  I  am  here.  Let  turnips  and  corn-shocks, 
planted  trees  and  those  God  planted,  bushes  frowsy  as  an  unkempt  head, 

175 


and  trees  dyed  with  blood,  all  know  that  the  proprietor  of  this  manor  is 
come. 

I  climb  the  hill.  I  see  the  cattle  browsing  on  the  meadow.  I  hear 
the  musings  of  winds  in  the  trees,  and  look  at  Quaylecroft,  and  flush  with 
pride,  and  stand  at  the  gash  in  the  woods  at  the  hilltop  and  see  the  blue, 
far,  partly  surly  dimness  of  distance  that  clothes  valley  and  hill  and  corn- 
field and  wandering  of  stream  in  beauty  of  dimness;  and  see  how  the 
hills  are  great  bonfires,  and  seared  grasses  and  burning  sumacs  make 
one  hillside  a  regal  purple.  And  I  go  down  the  hill  and  walk  along  my 
wood  road  (you  ought  to  see  it)  paved  with  leaves  multicolored  and 
odorous,  where  shade  and  sunlight  meet  like  old  cronies;  there  I  sit 
and  dream,  sometimes  of  yesterday,  sometimes  of  to-morrow,  some- 
times of  that  far,  glad  to-morrow  where  burdens  never  tire  us  nor  any 
tears  wear  ruts  on  the  face  nor  dim  the  eyes  from  seeing,  but  where 
beloved  meet  the  BELOVED,  and  holy  laughter  fills  the  heart  forever. 

'  'Lightly  he  blows,  and  at  his  breath  they  fall, 

The  perishing  kindreds  of  the  leaves;  'they  drift, 
Spent  flames  of  scarlet,  gold  aerial, 

Across  the  hollow  year,  noiseless  and  swift. 
Lightly  he  blows,  and  countless  as  the  falling 

Of  snow  by  night  upon  a  solemn  sea, 
The  ages  circle  down  beyond  recalling. 

To  strew  the  hollows  of  eternity. 
He  sees  them  drifting  through  the  spaces  dim, 
And  leaves  and  ages  are  as  one  to  him.'" 

—CHARLES   G.   D.   ROBERTS. 


MY  FARM 


MY  FARM 


[OWN  a  farm.  This  is  stated  in  a 
spirit  of  pardonable  vanity.  I  am 
of  those  who  are  "purse  proud," 
|  having  a  farm  which  some  friends 
of  mine  affect  to  make  light  of  as 
if  the  possession  of  a  demesne  of 
eighty  acres  was  a  matter  of  small 
consequence.  However,  none  of 
these  things  move  me.  I  am  im- 
pervious to  such  intimations,  know- 
ing as  I  do,  though  I  regret  to  say 
it,  that  they  all  spring  from  envy. 
One  friend — though  I  have  cut  his 
acquaintance  since  the  remark — being  asked  where  my  farm  lay,  re- 
plied with  a  Machiavelian  look,  "It  does  not  lie,  it  stands  on  end," 
referring  to  the  fact,  in  which  I  take  great  and  legitimate  pride,  that  this 
estate  of  mine  lies  on  a  very  steep  hill.  I  think  it  strange  that  envy  can 
so  seize  one  who  is  otherwise  pleasant  and  companionable  and  virtuous. 
After  careful  and  disinterested  observation,  I  am  prone  to  believe 
that  owning  a  farm  tends  to  catholicity  and  magnanimity.  In  any  case, 
since  having  the  estate  alluded  to,  I  am  totally  disinterested.  Mansions 
tempt  me  not.  No  roomy  ranch  with  herds  and  harvests  stings  me  to 
covetousness.  I  too  am  a  landholder.  Some  of  Mother  Earth  is  mine. 
I  own  a  tree,  and  a  ravine,  and  a  spring  of  running  water,  and  a  red 
clover  pasture,  and  a  whip-poor-will,  and  much  moonlight,  and  a  small  bil 
of  sky,  and  now  and  then  a  cloud.  What  hinders  me  being  a  landed 
proprietor?  Do  I  not  pay  taxes  and  own  tax  receipts,  and  work  road 

tax?     Do  not  neighboring  landed  gentry  complain  of  the  ill-repair  of 

181 


my  fences  so  that  their  cattle  come  into  my  field  and  eat  of  my  corn, 
which  they  lay  as  a  grievance  against  me,  instead  of  complaining  at 
their  cattle  as  culprits?  Are  not  these  things  credentials  of  proprietor- 
ship of  such  magnitude  as  that  no  holders  of  a  principality  can  do  better 
save  in  the  quantity  of  taxes  and  complaints? 

I  consider  landholding  gives  a  man  an  independence  of  spirit  not 
obtainable  in  any  other  way.  He  has  a  spot  whereon  to  live,  and — if 
need  be — whereon  to  die  and  wherein  to  be  buried.  Wherever  he  is, 
though  he  own  not  the  land  on  which  he  walks,  he  yet  retains  the  feel- 
ing that  there  is  a  bit  of  earth  whereon  he  walks  with  the  step  of  a  lord, 
not  to  say  a  conqueror.  A  landholder  loses  that  apologetic  air  so  detri- 
mental to  manhood.  His  proprietary  instinct  precipitates  (to  speak  in 
chemical  phrase  in  deference  to  the  soil  of  my  farm)  in  his  attitude 
and  conduct.  He  can  not  be  browbeaten  by  the  vulgar  or  the  elite. 
Truly  some  have  larger  holdings  than  mine ;  but  the  depth  of  their  land 
is  not  greater  than  mine,  nor  the  height  of  their  sky.  They  may  grow 
a  little  more  crop ;  but  if  they  grow  a  little  more,  I  grow  a  little  less,  so 
that  I  too  have  my  idiosyncrasy  of  genius. 

As  appears,  I  am  not  a  Henry  Georgeite.  He  vexes  my  soul.  I 
am  for  ownership  of  soil,  and  albeit  the  owning  is  rather  expensive,  I  do 
not  retract  a  sentiment,  nor  regret  a  penny  planted  in  my  soil  (though 
it  has  never  had  the  courtesy  to  so  much  as  sprout).  No,  with  all 
deference  to  the  ghost  of  Henry  George,  I  must  say  that  so  far  from 
land  ownership  being  against  nature,  it  is  strictly  in  harmony  with 
nature,  especially  with  my  nature.  I  am  of  opinion  that  land,  like  a 
child,  likes  to  belong  to  somebody. 

I  am  a  son  of  the  soil.  Emerson  says  (and  his  words  are  golden), 
that  contact  with  the  earth  is  medicinal;  and  I  doubt  not  he  is  right. 
Confident  I  am  that  contact  with  my  earth  is  medicinal.  The  moment 
I  set  foot  on  my  farm  I  seem  to  have  stepped  under  my  meridian.  But 
Christian  humility  is  so  developed  in  me  that  I  walk  not  haughtily  nor 
yet  obsequiously,  though  I  confess  to  a  certain  erectness  of  shoulders 
not  native  to  me,  for  I  am  a  large  trifle  stooped  (much  learning  is 
presumed  to  be  the  cause) ;  but  Emerson  did  not  say  all  the  truth. 
Contact  with  the  earth  is  medicinal,  but  we  do  not  need  medicine  much 
of  the  time.  I  will  advance  on  my  friend  Emerson's  dictum,  affirming 
that  contact  with  the  earth  is  dietary.  We  must  all  eat,  not  as  a  matter 
of  luxury,  but  necessity.  Now,  contact  with  the  ground  is  one  way  a 
man  "can  live  without  dining."  (Apology  to  Owen  Meredith's  ghost), 

182 


[  have  long  since  been  persuaded  that  I  breathe  through  my  feet  (not 
to  the  exclusion  of  my  lungs,  to  be  sure),  and  I  am  now,  since  becom- 
ing a  landholder,  prone  to  believe  that  eyes,  hands,  and  feet,  are  sorts 
of  receptive  and  assimilative  organs,  and  that  on  the  earth  one  can  eat 
without  the  usual  routine.  I  feel  a  satisfied  hunger  when  I  get  on  my 
farm  (not  denying  that  a  lunch  helps  to  the  entire  satisfaction  of 
hunger).  A  look  about  me  as  corn  shocks  stand  yellow  as  rusty  brass 
in  the  slant  light  of  autumn,  or  on  the  growing  corn,  standing  tall  and 
straight  as  regulars  on  duty,  with  the  utter  grace  of  the  blades  as  they 
swing  indolently  as  doing  it  out  of  courtesy  and  not  of  necessity;  or 
when  I  see  tangles  of  weeds  down  along  the  runnels  or  hedge  corners 
(for  I  confess  to  a  frank  delight  in  weeds,  even  if  they  grow  in  a  spirit 
of  impertinence  in  my  field;  for  tangles  of  weeds  are  never  inartistic. 
They  are  like  women,  always  of  beautiful  pose) — and  when  I  see  weeds 
on  my  farm  and  know  that  they  are  mine,  I  feel  as  if  I  had  been  at 
Thanksgiving  dinner  (at  another  man's  house).  Contact  with  earth, 
friend  Emerson,  is  not  only  medicinal,  but  dietary.  Set  that  down  for 
certain.  When  on  my  farm  a  spirit  of  courtesy  controls  me.  I  feel  a 
rising  hospitality.  I  wish  to  invite  the  farmless  to  come  in  and  sit 
under  my  shade,  and  walk  in  my  sunshine  ;  for  I  have  both.  People 
may  have  their  chance  when  on  my  premises.  I  feel  a  resident  spirit 
of  pity  for  learned  men,  and  lawyers,  and  merchants,  and  all  such  as 
have  no  farm.  I  find  myself  looking  at  them  with  commiserative  eyes, 
though  themselves  look  at  my  farm  and  me  with  ill-concealed  pity, 
while  I  hold  on  tight  to  my  overalls — one  suspender  being  "busted;" — 
these  landless  men,  I  repeat,  look  at  me  with  a  smile  ill  concealed; 
and  I  am  not  so  blind  as  not  to  see  that  they  have  their  jest  at  my 
expense  the  minute  they  pass  me  by,  turning  to  look  back  at  me  as  if  I 
were  a  joke.  To  be  patient  with  such  superficiality  and  frivolity  is  hard, 
but  I  am.  If  they  pity  me,  I  pity  them;  and  I  have  the  farm.  And 
this  farm  of  mine  is  much  more  than  people  suppose.  They  think  I 
was  buncoed  when  I  bought  the  place;  but  I  was  not.  They  think  so 
because  the  descent  of  the  farm  is  swift  and  the  ascent  slow.  These 
.are  facts;  but  it  does  not  follow  that  I  was  beaten  in  my  bargain — far 
from  it.  This  is  my  shrewdness.  There  is  more  land  on  a  farm  with 
steep  hills  on  it  than  on  a  level  plot.  One  would  think  people  would 
know  that,  but  people  are  not  profound  as  I  have  discovered  since 
becoming  a  landholder;  they  see  neither  deep  nor  far.  Now,  as  I  have 
intimated  in  plain  statement,  my  farm  taxes  at  eighty  acres  but  after 

183 


climbing  up  the  thing  and  sliding  down  the  thing  a  good  many  times,  1 
am  firmly  convinced  that  I  own  in  the  neighborhood  of  one  hundred  and 
sixty  acres;  and  this  increase  in  my  estate  is  wholly  attributable  to  the 
steep  incline.  To  own  a  hill  seems  to  me  the  acme  of  desire.  Aspira- 
tion blooms  out  on  hills,  and  besides  so  situated,  I  need  not  migrate 
with  the  birds  to  get  the  seasons,  or  summer  or  winter  residence.  All 
I  need  do  is  to  toil  up  the  hill,  or  slide  down  it.  At  one  extremity,  viz., 
the  hill,  I  call  the  habitation  there  erected  Quaylecliff,  and  the  residence 
erected  at  the  base  of  the  hill  I  call  Quaylecroft.  Now,  could  a  man 
owning  a  level  farm,  every  foot  of  which  is  tillable,  have  so  economical, 
and  yet  so  delightful  arrangement,  or  coin  such  names  for  his  vernacu- 
lar? Evidently  he  could  not.  The  flat  farm  owner  may  have  larger 
crops  and  may  in  consequence  get  some  rent,  and  moreover,  his  land 
may  stay  where  it  was  put  with  more  tenacity ;  but  these  are  inconse- 
quential matters  when  compared  with  the  legitimate  aristocracy  of 
possessing  such  names  as  "cliff"  and  "croft."  Now  these  localities 
are  on  my  farm  and  have  been  for  several  years.  They  go  with  the 
place.  I  own  one  hundred  and  sixty  acres  (or  close  to  that),  of  spring, 
summer,  autumn,  winter.  I  do  not  wish  to  boast.  Vanity  is  not  natural 
to  me.  I  have  not  been  accused  of  a  predisposition  to  braggadocio,  but 
do  confess  that  when  I  consider  how  sections  of  the  four  seasons  are 
mine  to  rent,  loan,  or  sell,  I  am  with  difficulty  restrained  from  a  little 
Falstaffian  swagger,  not  to  say  lying.  Sometime,  I  fear,  when  off 
guard,  I  shall  be  guilty  of  both ;  but  the  provocation  will,  to  my  thought, 
justify. 

This  farm  has  had  a  fine  diversity  of  tenants  since  I  have  been 
paying  taxes  on  it.  Variety  is  the  spice  (allspice,  also  pepper),  of 
farming.  I  detest  the  humdrum  of  changelessness,  and  have  suffered 
nothing  from  ennui  from  this  cause  since  becoming  proud  possessor  of 
this  estate.  My  first  tenant  was  an  Ethiopian.  He  was  a  good  man, 
and  religious,  and  his  wife  raised  turkeys,  and  he  had  a  family  great  for 
multitude,  but  his  wife  had — in  some  calamity  prior  to  coming  to  my 
farm — lost  one  of  her  bodily  supports,  and  so  chased  her  family  over 
my  farm  on  one  leg.  Now  this  condition  irritated  my  sense  of  female 
grace.  Woman  is  a  biped.  This  woman  was  a  uniped.  Such  a  con- 
dition was  contrary  to  nature ;  and  a  farmer  must  not  go  in  the  face  of 
nature  any  more  than  in  the  face  of  Providence.  I  say  no  more.  The 
next  renter  was,  in  the  vernacular,  a  Dutchman.  He  was  a  brave 
horse  trader,  and  set  posts  for  my  vineyard,  and  possessed  much  suavity 

184 


of  manner  (though  not  much  suavity  of  farming)  ;  but  when  he  met  me 
he  had  a  habit  of  saying  in  a  loud  voice  fitted  for  calling  cattle,  "Hello, 
Doc.,  how  ish  de  old  vooman?"  This  considerate  attention  coming  to 
Mrs.  Mugwump's  ears,  the  man  moved  from  the  farm  before  his  lease 
expired.  The  next  gentleman  to  do  me  the  courtesy  to  reside  on  my 
farm  gratis,  was  an  American.  He  was  a  devotee  of  business,  but  not 
of  my  business.  He  took  the  medal,  however,  for  raising  sunflowers. 
When  he  was  on  horseback  (and  he  rode  a  tall  and  angular  nag),  he 
could  ride  through  his  sunflower  grove  and  not  be  detected.  He  was 
as  practically  concealed  as  if  he  had  been  riding  through  the  forests  of 
the  Amazon.  Now  I  was  gratified  to  see  the  excessive  fertility  of  my 
soil ;  but  the  neighbors  smiled  at  the  harvest,  and  I  think  one's  neigh- 
bors are  to  be  considered  (no  man  liveth  to  himself).  This  tenant 
went  away  leaving  the  spring  in  the  old  spot,  for  which  I  was  duly 
grateful.  The  barb  wire  fence  he  wrapped  up  in  reels.  I  hope  he  used 
it  for  settees.  The  next  tenant  was  an  Irishman  and  was  a  choice 
spirit,  kindly,  but  not  facetious ;  courageous,  but  not  a  man  of  levity ;  a 
Sir  Walter  Raleigh  in  the  use  of  the  pipe,  and  as  honest  as  Aristides. 
He  encourages  the  apples  to  grow,  but  discourages  the  cockle  burs,  and 
the  reverse  had  been  the  uniform  custom  of  his  predecessors — my  ten- 
ants (I  speak  with  pride  in  my  pencil),  and  the  change  was  to  me  pleas- 
ant because  it  had  the  virtue  of  absolute  novelty.  My  only  fault  with 
this  tenant  is  that  he  is  so  overworked  keeping  my  farm  in  order  (this 
according  to  him)  that  he  has  no  time  to  go  to  church.  This  intensity 
of  application,  while  it  speaks  well  for  his  industry,  does  not  commend 
itself  to  me  as  first  rate  piety;  however  under  his  vigilant  administra- 
tion, the  sunflowers  are  not  a  good  crop,  but  the  corn  can  be  seen  even 
by  the  casual  observer,  and  in  the  winter,  corn  shocks  pitch  their  teiits 
on  the  place  like  some  army  in  winter  quarters.  While  lauding  with 
all  intensity  the  industry  of  this  tenant  and  studying  the  corn  he  raised 
with  admiration,  since  I  have  not  seen  its  like  before,  I  still  confess 
missing  the  sunflowers  that  grew  with  such  enthusiasm  and  made  such 
fine  shade,  and  even  in  the  winter  under  their  kind  auspices,  the  rabbits 
ate  my  apple-trees  with  delightful  avidity  and  friendliness  which  always 
challenged  my  admiration.  I  always  like  to  have  my  neighbors  feel  at 
home  with  me.  The  rabbits  used  (and  used-up)  my  apple-trees ;  but 
the  apple-trees  are  generally  understood  to  have  nourished  the  rabbits, 
and  apple-trees  and  myself  are  in  this  world  to  do  other  people  good. 
Strange  things  happen  on  my  farm.  Any  night  of  clear  skies  the 

187 


Pleiades  take  a  stroll  over  my  farm  looking  at  it  intently ;  but  what  they 
see  justifies  a  long  journey.  The  sun  walks  on  the  south  line  of  my 
farm  in  winter,  and  straight  across  my  farm  in  summer.  A  public  high- 
way goes  along  the  east  and  just  the  same  on  the  west  of  said  real  estate, 
and  on  the  north  I  run  a  domestic  highway,  which  is,  I  may  say,  how- 
ever, "eloquent  with  beauty."  Nothing  keeps  away  from  this  farm. 
This,  I  think,  creditable  to  the  place — for  instance,  the  road  on  the  west 
crowds  rather  rudely  on  my  ground,  ostensibly  because  the  hill  is  so 
steep,  the  road  must  make  the  ascent  by  angles;  actually  because  I 
have  such  inviting  shade  that  the  road  panting  hot  in  long  summer 
days  urges  its  tired  way  under  my  spreading  trees  to  rest  like  a  school- 
boy tired  with  climbing. 

More  things  than  I,  love  my  farm,  so  that  I  conclude  good  taste  is 
really  prevalent.  The  sportsmen  come  to  my  wooded  hill,  though  I  like 
not  the  art  of  killing.  But  my  neighbors  do  have  the  courtesy  to  come 
and  send  a  cloud  of  powder  smoke  along  my  fields  or  in  my 
woods,  and  a  flock  of  quails  whirrs  by  on  startled  wing,  and 
— more  's  the  pity — sometimes  one  flutters  out  of  his  com- 
pany and  falls  dying  in  the  grass,  or  on  the  leaves.  The 
rabbit  frequents  my  cornfield,  which  I  take  as  a  compli- 
^ment,  though  he  is  a  costly  visitor,  because  he  persists  in 
dining  off  the  bark  of  my  apple  orchard,  and  I  have  a  scuffle 
all  winter  long  with  him  and  his  to  teach  them  manners; 
but  any  way,  all  hospitality  is  costly,  and  the  hospitable  man  must  not  sulk 
if  his  bills  are  heavy  when  his  friends  are  many.  Friends  are  cheap 
whatever  they  cost.  I  would  not  have  my  farm  deserted  of  these  neigh- 
borly folk,  squirrel  and  jay  and  quail  and  rabbit  and  crow.  Burns 
was  right,  I  think.  The  mouse  is  worth  his  board.  From  such  a 
tenant  we  lose  a  little  and  gain  a  great  deal.  What  were  a  hundred 
fields  in  their  loss  of  grain  matched  with  Burns's  poem  on  the 
"Mousie,"  which  fairly  aches  with  sympathy  for  the  beasties  of  the  field? 
I  confess  to  a  love  for  the  hawk  with  his  swift  shadow  and  his  bold  flight 
rich  in  the  ecstasy  of  motion  ;  and  when  I  hear  the  owl  call  piteously 
through  the  dark  in  the  back  lands,  along  the  fringes  of  the  hills  in  the 
dark  woods,  I  like  him  too.  He  is  not  mannerly,  nor  cordial.  He  is 
not  even  commonly  sociable.  I  have  found  him  a  sort  of  morose,  sullen 
creature,  but  he  has  a  touch  of  sadness  in  his  voice,  and  doubtless  may 
have  his  own  family  troubles,  which  may  account  for  his  behavior 
("Judge  not,  lest  ye  be  judged").  These  folks  are  all  my  neighbors  and 

188 


are  welcome.  They  have  rights  as  well  as  I;  and  after  these  years  of 
farming  wherein  losses  have  much  outranked  my  gains,  so  much  so  that 
long  since  I  have  ceased  to  keep  accounts  because  I  felt  so  sad  and  dis- 
appointed when  I  looked  at  my  balance  sheet.  After  these  years,  I  say, 
I  like  these  marauders.  Were  they  absent,  I  might  raise  more  (I  can 
not  say),  but  I  would  enjoy  less.  I  am  a  hedonist  when  on  my  farm. 
I  love  to  hear  the  quail's  call  on  a  summer  afternoon  when  evening  is  not 
far  away.  His  note  is  so  clear,  so  liquid  clear,  and  his  cheer  is  like  peren- 
nial joy,  and  when  you  can  give  him  a  playground  and  house  and  garden 
patch  in  your  field  for  so  little  cost,  and  for  such  cheerful  piping,  I,  for  one, 
love  him  for  a  tenant.  And  the  rabbits,  with  their  strange  timorous- 
ness,  that  seem  to  dwell  in  perpetual  fear,  yet  have  delight  through  all 
their  troubles,  I  love  them.  To 
see  a  rabbit  sprawling  like  a 
pickaninny  in  the  sun,  is  to  see 
a  life-size  picture  of  content- 
ment and  grace ;  and  in  the 
summer,  when  the  dogs  seem 
to  have  their  teeth  pulled,  the 
rabbit  will  calm  his  fear  for  a 
moment  to  look  at  your  com- 
ing, and  the  rabbit  child — no 
bigger  than  a  country  biscuit — 
is  so  cute  as  to  make  me  always 
call  him  by  some  pet  diminu- 
tive as  1  do  my  baby.  And 

when  they  hie  them  to  the  thicket  where  the  briers  are  rabbit  barri- 
cades, their  scurry  away  is  like  dim  laughter,  and  I  like  them  for 
tenants  too.  They  may  stay  without  gruff  talk  from  me.  I  am  for  the 
rights  of  the  world.  The  crow — nothing  would  induce  me  to  part  from 
him.  Frankly,  I  love  him,  though  to  the  best  of  my  belief,  he  does  not 
return  my  affection.  I  love  him  and  am  glad  I  have  woods  where  he 
nests  in  summer,  and  where  he  spends  his  nights  in  winter  with  his 
dusky  wings  close  against  his  dusky  sides  and  his  sagacious  eyes  asleep. 
He  may  do  harm,  but  1  doubt  it ;  he  does  more  good  than  harm.  He 
is  friend  to  the  farmer,  but  we  farmers  do  not  always  know  our  friends ; 
but,  friend  or  foe,  I  like  him.  His  dudish  and  impertinent  walk,  his  dis- 
inclination to  have  anything  to  do  with  me,  his  stay  with  us  all  winter 
when  other  birds  are  mostly  gone  leaving  us  alone,  his  remarks  which 

189 


some  think  dull,  but  I  think  droll,  his  fondness  for  his  own  kind  and 
apparent  ability  to  get  along  with  his  wife's  folks,  his  choppy,  short 
flights,  like  an  inexpert  rower  rowing  hard  over  tumbling  waters,  his 
higher  flights,  sometimes  graceful  as  the  soaring  hawk,  and  all  but  as 
swift,  his  sure  home  comLig  at  the  night,  sometimes  with  wild 
speed  and  sometimes  slowly  as  if  in  his  long  journey  of  the  day  he  had 
grown  wing-weary,  his  steadfast  love  for  home ;  for  wherever  he  may 
have  been  by  daylight,  home  he  comes  by  twilight;  and  if  you  have  ever 
heard  him  calling  across  the  evening  sky  glorious  with  sunset,  and  wing- 
ing his  way  as  if  he  might  cross  a  continent,  and  then  all  of  a  sudden 
he  gyrates  like  a  cyclone  funnel — for  he  has  gotten  home, — if  you  have 
seen  this,  your  heart  must  have  been  touched  as  well  as  your  eye  grati- 
fied, for  if  everybody  knew  enough  to  come  home  at  night  wherever  they 
may  have  been  by  day,  the  world  would  have  more  laughter,  and  sweeter 
mirth,  and  more  heaven  before  heaven  were  journeyed  to.  No,  I  like 
the  crow  and  his  independence  of  me  and  my  liking  (for  he  ignores  me 
as  he  struts  along  my  field  as  if  he  paid  taxes  instead  of  myself).  When 
I  speak  to  him,  he  deigns  no  reply,  but  walks  on  with  his  proprietary 
air;  he  does  not  know  me  and  apparently  does  not  want  to.  Who  has 
set  his  black  mind  against  me,  I  can  not  tell,  but  certain  it  is  he  will 
not  be  friends  with  me  (some  people  think  he  is  wise  in  that,  but  my 
judgment  is  he  makes  a  mistake).  I  do  not  like  to  be  ignored,  even  by 
a  crow;  however,  I  like  him  so  well  he  is  welcome  to  his  impertinent 
mien.  He  survives,  no  thanks  to  others.  Nobody  seems  to  love  him ; 
but  he  is  indifferent.  He  does  not  sulk  nor  hide,  he  never  runs  to 
shelter  like  the  rabbits,  nor  hides  in  the  hedge  rows  like  the  quail,  but 
affects  the  open,  flies  low  over  your  head,  talks  to  himself  sometimes 
while  he  swaggers  across  the  sky,  lights  among  your  corn  shocks,  grows 
pnggish  before  your  very  eyes,  snubs  you,  neither  laughs  nor  giggles,  but 
is  always  solemn  as  a  hired  mourner,  propitiates  nobody  except  himself. 
He  is  brave  as  a  soldier  and  sometimes  as  truculent ;  but  winter,  spring, 
summer,  autumn,  here  he  is,  sometimes  by  himself  walking  along  like  a 
preacher  concocting  his  sermon,  sometimes  with  a  few  intimate  friends 
like  a  bevy  of  girls  after  a  party,  and  like  the  girls  all  talking  at  once, 
sometimes,  especially  in  autumn  or  winter,  in  great  conventions  noisy 
as  stump  orators  and  as  indefinite  in  destination,  — here  he  stays,  and 
here  he  lives  despite  his  foes;  and  to  be  brief,  I  like  him,  and  I  fee* 
proud  with  what  I  hope  is  Scriptural  pride,  that  so  stately  a  gentleman 
condescends  to  help  me  farm.  I  like  that  part  immensely. 

190 


CROWS 


And  the  squirrel,  I  like  him.  I  love  his  russet  hilarity.  I  enjoy  his 
impudence,  for  at  sight  of  me  he  orders  me  off  the  place.  I  have 
the  tax  receipts.  I  have  by  the  sweat  of  my  face  secured  them ;  but 
no  difference,  he  has  the  rights  of  squatter  sovereignity,  and  bids  me  in 
an  unseemly  and  bossy  fashion  to  quit  the  premises  and  leave  the  woods 
to  him.  He  is  delicious  in  his  effrontery  as  the  nip  of  a  winter  wind. 
He  scurries  across  my  winter  leaves,  zigzags  up  the  trees,  pauses  not  to 
get  breath,  but  to  give  me  a  piece  of  his  mind,  tosses  himself  from  tree- 
top  to  treetop,  crows  over  me  because  I  can  not  do  it,  sits  and  giggles 
at  me,  "  I  dare  you  to  do  it ;"  eats  a  nut  he  has  stolen  from  me  in  my 
presence,  and  eats  it  with  the  method  of  an  epicure,  tosses  off  squirrel 
jokes  at  me,  which  I  being  only  a  man  and  a  trifle  slow  do  not  see  the  fun 
in  until  the  next  day,  and  throws  them  at  me  in  a  catarrhal  voice  (for 
a  squirrel  always  has  a  cold  which  affects  his  bronchial  tubes),  and 
while  taking  another  one  of  my  walnuts  from  his  pocket,  he  sails  off 
without  the  courtesy  of  an  "  Excuse  me,  please;"  notwithstanding  I  like 
him,  and  had  1  my  way,  no  squirrel  should  ever  be  shot  in  my  woods. 
I  would  pension  him  to  stay. 

But  come,  friend,  and  I  will  take  you  through  my  farm,  or  to  speak 
with  greater  accuracy  in  deference  to  my  neighbors  and  critics,  I  will 
take  you  up  and  down  my  farm,  and  you  shall  see  for  yourself  what 
riches  I  am  master  of.  Come  to  the  hilltop.  This  hill,  to  use  the 
phrase  of  our  sweet  friend,  Alfred  Tennyson,  is  "  tiptilted  like  the  petal 
of  a  flower,"  which  is  poetry  for  the  prose  of  pug-nosed.  This  hill  has 
considerable  individuality,  for  which  I  praise  it.  There  is  no  hill  just  like 
it  hereabouts,  nor  for  that  matter  thereabouts — wherever  that  is.  I 
want  you  to  notice  this  view,  actually  it  beats  all.  I  have  traveled — 
well,  I  will  not  boast,  I  simply  say  I  have  traveled — let  your  imagina- 
tion fill  in  the  rest,  lest  I  seem  to  be  like  those  vain  boasters  who  com- 
pare everything  they  see  with  what  they  profess  to  have  seen.  How- 
ever, resuggesting,  "I  have  traveled" — 
and  this  hill  just  beats  all  and  this  view 
is  like  the  hill.  This  view  is  worth  a  gold  x 

mine.  Have  you  traveled  far  and  seen 
much  ?  Then,  friend,  look  and  tell  me 
in  candor,  have  you  seen  more  beauty 
than  here  ?  From  this  cliff  you  can  see 
many  unhindered  miles,  where  beauty 
blooms  profuse  as  lilacs  in  the  spring. 

193 


If  you  look  southward,  and  I  want  you  to,  note  that  delicious  blue 
beyond  the  blue.  See  how  it  tilts  against  the  sky  like  the  dear  sea! 
Really,  friend,  my  farm  is  cheap  whatever  it  cost  me,  to  have  the 
sea  on  its  south  horizon.  Here  I  am,  geographically  stated,  fifteen 
hundred  miles  from  the  ocean,  and,  in  all  honor,  as  I  look  over  and  over 
again,  I  feel  looking  at  the  sea  as  I  have  seen  it  from  the  inlands  of  the 
Isle  of  Mona,  as  I  have  seen  it  from  the  shores  of  Maine,  back  in  the 
r  meadows  with  the  pines  for  background,  or  in  Cali- 
fornia, where  scorched  deserts  smoked  at  my  back 
in  the  furious  sun;  but  this  sea  we  are  looking  on 
now  has  all  the  ravishment  of  those,  and  did  I  not 
know  (for  I  am  a  knowing  man,  notwithstanding 
many  intimations  to  the  contrary)  that  the  sea  was 
not  there,  1  could  take  oath  that  there  its  waters 
lashed  shoreward  with  multitudinous  music  and 
gentle  laughter.  Often  from  this  hill  have  - 1  re- 
freshed my  tired  spirit  by  watching  this  bewilder- 
ment of  sea,  and  have  been  fain  to  believe  that  a 
sea  breeze  went  lingering  by  my  cheek.  Here  I 
entertain  dreams  of  the  sea,  and  the  murmur  of 
soft  music  comes  to  me  as  when  in  long  blessed 
nights,  I  have  half  slumbered  and  half  wakened  on 
a  seabeach  listening  to  the  hoarse  calls  from  the 
tremendous  deep  when  it  "moans  round  with  many 
voices."  This  is  my  seashore,  and  these  cliffs  a/e 
my  sea  cliffs,  and  I  could  stand  and  watch  this  blue, 
unhindered  ocean,  all  the  glad  day  as  in  a  happy 
dream.  Here  I  may  with  Friend  Whittier — pitch 
my  tent  upon  the  beach,  and  hear  the  night  wind 
surging  through  the  tree  tops  with  unquenchable 
music,  and  think  I  hear  the  music  of  the  sea. 
And  then  this  sea  is  not  a  dream  of  the  sea,  but 
a  dreamless  sea,  and  do  you  wonder  I  love  my  farm  when  it  borders  on 
what  sweet  Blackmore  calls  "the  great  unvintaged  ocean?" 

Now,  friend,  look  northward,  Once  I  tried  to  experiment  on  my 
Dutchman  (mine  then,  but  mine  no  longer;  he  has  changed  pasture, 
much  to  the  benefit  of  my  pasture)  saying,  "That  is  a  beautiful  view, 
is  n't  it?"  To  which,  while  he  tamped  the  posts  down  and  spat  copious 
tobacco  on  my  grass,  he  replied,  "Bully."  That  was  praise  and  I  was 

194 


rfrVjLjiiF^yyy^ 
*    ^"    '%*-." 


elated,  for  not  every  farm  has 
"bully"  views.  This  farm  has; 
but,  in  honor,  know  you  any 
blues  like  Kansas  blues,  if  there 
be  sufficient  distance?  I  have 
seen  the  blues  in  the  Alleghanies 
and  in  the  Adirondacks,  and  the 
White  Mountains  and  Green 
Mountains,  in  the  San  Francisco 
Mountains  and  the  Sierras,  and 
the  high  roof  ridges  of  the 
Rockies,  but  am  bound  to  say 
I  know  not  any  blue  distance  so 
dreamy,  quieting,  and  satisfying 
as  a  Kansas  distance.  This 
valley  seen  from  my  hill  is 
scarred  with  figures  of  green 
trees  where  the  scant  brooks 
run,  and  the  delight  of  green 
hills  where  fields  and  orchards 


cling  in  sheer  fertility,  and  valleys  where  deep  green  of  cornfields  is 
islanded  in  seas  of  amethyst,  and  in  June,  harvests  are  billowy  with  gold 
whose  stately  waves  toss  and  break  on  a  green  strand  of  the  field  edge 
with  never  a  white  crest  of  billow,  nor  a  sound  of  waters  breaking  on  the 
shore,  and  when  the  grain  is  harvested  and  stands  in  tents  of  gold  as  if 
an  army  of  angels  were  camped  there  upon  a  holiday — ah !  but  the  valley 
is  sweet  to  look  upon ;  and  in  such  golden  days  of  harvests,  I  have  some- 
times dreamed  I  was  looking  upon  the  city  (where  my  hopes  and  my 
loves  build  a  little  house  eternal  in  the  heavens),  whose  streets  are  pure 
gold.  And  if  angels  would  come  flying  homeward  on  a  summer  after- 
noon and  look,  they  would  think  that  they  were  nearer  than  they  dreamed. 
And,  besides,  this  view  is  a  surprise,  for  the  road  that  comes  from  the 
south  leading  straight  up  to  it  must  take  a  sharp  turn  when  it  passes  my 
hedge  and  jog  into  my  land — when  through  the  lattice  of  the  trees  and 
through  the  gateway  in  my  woods— this  fair  vision  breaks  on  you  like 
the  vision  poets  see.  This  crop  never  fails  me  (the  other  crops  never 
succeed).  Drouth,  hot  winds,  too  late  spring,  or  too  early  spring,  insects 
of  divers  names  but  all  with  ravenous  instincts,  poor  plowing  or  no 
plowing,  late  sowing,  or  too  early  sowing,  or  no  sowing  whatsoever  (I 
have  had  considerable  of  this  kind  of  crops  last  mentioned),  whatever 
the  condition  and  whatever  happens  to  the  crops  I  put  in,  nothing 
tampers  with  this  harvest  of  beauty  and  this  blessed  vintage.  God 
always  gives  me  this  crop.  0!  it  is  good  to  own  this  farm! 

Rest  your  eyes  now,  friend  (pardon  me,  your  name  slips  my  mem- 
ory) ,  from  that  long  vision  and  look  behind  you.  This  is  my  red  clover- 
field.  If  I  am  proud  of  this  bit  of  landscape  gardening,  do  not  blame 
me.  This  red  clover  pasture  here  on  this  hilltop  has  a  dreamy  sway  as 
if  a  wind  blew  from  very  far  off.  But  when  that  leaf  of  the  clover 
(have  you  noticed  its  perfect  shape,  and  the  inroads  the  varying  lines  of 
green  make  on  the  leaf?)  flushes  out  a  smile  to  spring,  so  like  a  plain 
face  illuminated  with  a  great  love,  it  is  well  worth  a  pilgrimage  to  see, 
and  I  think  nothing  could  be  lovelier.  But  when  June  comes  with  her 
sweet  beauty,  and  kisses  the  green  clover  fronds  and  they  blaze  out 
blossoming,  then  I  know  God  made  nothing  lovelier  (save  children  and 
women  only) ;  and  when  the  soft  south  wind  dreams  over  the  field  and 
comes  away  with  faint  odors  clinging  to  its  garments,  then  I  wonder  God 
could  think  on  so  many  sweet  things  to  do.  I  wonder  he  has  any  beauty 
left  to  give  to  any  field  or  flower;  but  he  needs  not  to  study  parsimony 
as  the  poets  do.  He  hath,  and  to  him  hath  been  given  and  he  giveth 

198 


to  the  morning  its  light,  and  to  the  violet  its  blue,  and  to  the  golden-rod 
its  gold,  and  to  the  whip-poor-will  his  dolorous  cry,  and  to  the  rose  its 
blushes,  and  to  the  stars  their  light;  and  after  he  has  given  to  all  he 
h23  not  yet  begun.  He  is  the  affluent  God  and  his  resources  are  past 
all  possibility  of  exhaustion. 

There  is  a  patch  of  plum-trees  fringing  the  edges  of  the  cloverfield, 
thick-sown  they  are — God  sowed  them — and  when  spring  is  new,  they 
are  a  tall  pile  of  snow  fresh  fallen,  only  there  blows  from  them  an  odor 
not  of  snowdrifts  or  winter,  since  snowdrifts  are  odorless  ;  plum-sown 
drifts  are  odor-full.  Sweet  it  is  after  long  winter  months,  when  woods 
and  fields  have  all  their  odors  sealed — for  frozen  fields  are  odorless — to 
walk  over  my  hillfield  and  on  a  sudden  have  wafted  in  my  face  odors 
that  might  have  been  distilled  for  kings  to  use  on  coronation  days,  and 
feel  myself  in  the  path  of  the  winds  a-blowing  from  my  drift  of  plum 
blossoms,  My  heart  sings,  "Spring  is  here!  Spring  is  here!"  And 
the  meadowlark  singing  to  the  sun  makes  not  more  music  than  my 
heart,  with  its  bird-call,  "Spring  is  come,  is  come!" 

Friend,  I  can  see  you  want  my  farm ;  but  I  remind  you  of  the  com- 
mandment, "Thou  shalt  not  covet  thy  neighbor's"  farm.  Let  us  go 
down  through  the  woods  slowly.  Make  no  haste,  for  woods  are  not  made 
to  pass  through  lightly.  God  has  been  a  good  while  growing  these  trees 
and  is  not  through  yet.  Walk  down  from  the  crest  of  the  hill  through 
the  thickets  where  vines  and  briers  tangle  (get  some  nettles  on  your 
clothes — so — you  look  better),  and  pass  that  big  elm,  off  with  your  hat, 
man ;  and  now  lift  up  your  eyes — that  is  my  orchard.  Do  you  see  long 
rows  of  apple  trees?  Why,  I  have  come  up  through  great  tribulation  to 
get  them.  Every  one  represents  courage  on  my  part,  besides  some 
trifling  expense,  and  no  end  of  forbearance.  Those  of  mine  own  house- 
hold have  flouted  me  as  a  visionary  and  have  looked  knowingly  at  each 
other,  as  to  say,  "Poor  dear,  his  reason  was  once  as  balanced  as  ours." 
Genius  is  not  understood,  Columbus  found  it  so;  I  have  found  it  so. 
Great  dreamers  are.alwa>s  derided  (see  Palissy  the  potter,  and  Morse 
and  Goodyear).  Because  I  profess  to  see  the  day  when,  from  those 
boughs  apples  shall  hang  their  crimson  spheres,  even  that  person  related 
to  me,  as  Job's  wife  was  to  him,  has  snubbed  me  publicly  and  held  me 
up  domestically  to  the  ridicule  of  mine  own  children;  but  I  persevered. 
Genius  does.  I  have.  Each  year  I  planted  a  new  installment  of  apples 
till  now  I  have  some  thirty  acres  or  over  sown  to  them.  I  have  sown 
the  wind,  but  to  this  writing  I  have  not  reaped  the  whirlwind,  nor  even 

199 


a  good  Kansas  breeze  of  apples. 
I  do  not  despair.     "They  also  serve 
who  only  stand  and  wait,"  says  my 
special  friend,  Milton.  This  being  so, 
I  am  a  high-grade  servant  of  the 
apple  crop.    I  stand  and  wait. 
This  fall  I  went  through  the 
orchard,  and  (say  it  with 
no  haste,  nor  yet  "trip- 
pingly    on     the 
tongue,  "but  with 


ruddy; 
luscious 
scions 
of    the 
house  of  apple. 
What  a  day  that 
was !    I  can  not  for- 
get it;  and,  to  be  plain 
I   have   not    tried    to. 
That  was  my  day  of 
vindication.    I  was  like 
Job  when   his   trouble 
was  over — I  felt  good.     I  felt 
very  good.   "Apples!  apples!  " 
I  cried,  instead  of  calling  out 
that  ancient  word  (so  archaic), 
"Eureka!"     That  same  day  I  picked 
pears  (not  from  the  apple-trees),  and 
some  late  peaches  (hard  as  biscuits  new 
wives  bake).     But  providence  has  vindi- 
cated me.     Those  who  thought  me  mad  (and 
what  is  worse,  told  me  and  others  what  they 
thought)  are  now  humiliated,  and   I,  to  use  the 
psalmist's  phrase,  may  stand  by  and  say,  "Aha! 

200 


studied  delibera- 

ll  t 

tion,  as  a  man 

E5& 
&* 

**<*.  ^  ,  ^ 

would  kiss  his 
sweetheart), 
I       found 
apples,   big 

and 

• 


aha!"  This  being  the  Scriptural  method,  I  have  done  so.  But  I  can 
advise  an  apple  orchard.  It  is  better  than  investing  in  mines.  You 
never  know  what  you  will  get  by  what  you  plant.  A  quartet  of  things 
or  a  double  quartet  of  things  may  happen  to  the  tree.  It  may  freeze 
to  death,  or  borers  may  probe  it,  or  rabbits  may  girdle  it,  or  your  tenant 
may  drive  plow  or  wagon  over  it,  or  hot  winds  may  bake  it,  or  your 
neighbor's  cattle  may  come  uninvited  into  your  field  and  eat  it,  or — 
out  I  desist.  Enough  has  been  said  to  show  how  delicious  the  uncer- 
tainty, such  as  is  attendant  on  either  fishing  or  mining.  If  the  tree 
escapes  all  these  snares  of  appleyouth  it  may  come  to  applehood.  This 
also  is  uncertain.  This  process  is  as  thrilling  as  reading  a  serial  story 
written  by  Mrs.  Southworth.  Aye,  but  it  is  bonnie!  In  winter,  to  look 
across  the  tops  of  apple-trees  is  to  warm  both  eyes  and  hands ;  for  the 
branches  have  a  half-crimson,  half-purple  glow,  so  that  after  looking  at 
them  I  feel  as  if  I  had  warmed  my  hands  and  heart  at  a  ruddy  wood- 
blaze.  And  some  morning  you  will  walk  into  your  field,  and  suddenly 
your  spirit  will  sing,  like  happy  music  beside  the  conquering  sea,  when 
long  rows  of  apple-trees  are  in  early  spring  bloom — and  the  grass  has 
had  courage  to  grow  green,  and  the  brown  fields  in  which  the  trees 
grow  have  hint  of  spring's  coming;  for  the  field  will  be  pink  as  a 
winter-evening  sky,  and  the  apple-blossoms,  with  their  dainty  fragrance, 
and  their  exquisite  form  and  delicacy  of  coloring  make  it  so  that  resur- 
rection seems  not  myth,  but  truth.  An  apple  orchard  is  a  success,  you 
know,  when  the  apple-trees  bloom.  They  may  not  come  to  crop,  what 
odds?  They  have  done  enough  for  one  season.  Let  them  bloom  this 
year  and  bear  next  year.  A  man  must  not  be  covetous.  When  apple- 
branches  flush  with  bloom  heaven  is  no  remote  province,  but  nearer 
than  "  Down  to  old  Aunt  Mary's." 

The  pear-trees  are  beautiful  specimens  of  arboreal  life.  The  bark 
is  shiny  and  dainty,  and  in  color  like  unto  dregs  of  wine,  and  smooth  as 
polished  hardwoods.  God  has  taken  pains  with  pear-trees.  They  grow 
tall  and  graceful  as  a  woman,  and,  like  a  woman,  are  winsome.  The 
blossoms  are  snow-white — why,  the  almond  is  not  whiter,  nor  may-apple 
blossoms  (than  these,  what  could  be  more  snow-white)  ?  And  the  cherry- 
trees,  their  bark  is  smooth  and  polished,  and  blackberry  and  raspberry 
vines  have  rare  crimsons  to  cross  their  tangle  of  branch  and  color  over 
the  little  plot  where  they  are  sown.  They  are  the  ruddiest  colors  of  the 
winter,  save  those  which  glow  in  the  skies  when  daylight  shames  into 
the  dusk.  Peach-trees  I  love  more  in  summer  than  in  winter,  for  they 

201 


are  a  rotund  tree,  chunky,  like  a  little  body,  and  the  peach  leaf  is  a  lance 
with  which  fairy  warriors  might  wage  war.  So  delicate  in  green  and 
veining,  and  with  such  a  tang  to  the  taste  as  distinct  as  an  olive's, 
the  peach  leaf  is  itself  alone,  and  has  no  relations.  The  peach  blooms 
early  and  has  a  roseate  tint,  and  not  many  fruits  are  so  beautiful  as  the 
peach,  with  its  perfection  of  shade  and  many  hues,  varying  from  dim 
green  to  deep  crimson.  I  am  glad  I  planted  peaches  on  this  farm.  My 
sagacity  is  something  to  wonder  at.  I  knew  my  business,  that  is  clear. 


THE  RAVINE 

When  apple  branches  stoop  low  beneath  their  burdens  of  delicious  fruit 
(how  sweet  the  odor  of  apples  when  you  wander  slowly  through  a  laden 
orchard!),  and  when  peach-trees,  flush  from  their  thicket  of  deep  green 
leaves,  their  surprise  of  crimson  fruit,  and  when,  from  their  delicate 
stems  leaning  gracefully,  the  yellow  pears,  flushed  with  reds,  hang  in 
clusters,  what  farmer  but  must  be  proud  of  himself  and  be  mindful  of 
the  sweet  Providence  that  keeps  orchard  trees,  unforgetful  of  what 
fruits  each  tree  ought  to  bring  to  harvest;  for  I  recall  that  every  tree 

202 


remembers  what  fruit  is  expected  of  it,  and  that,  though  customary,  is 
very,  very  strange.  God  made  it  so.  How  else? 

Sauntering  across  the  gentle  slopes  of  my  farm  down  in  the  croft 
(for  I  have  gentle  slopes  sedate  as  middle  age — not  all  the  farm  is 
a  jump  up  and  fall  down)  is  a  ravine,  which  spring  rains  have  digged 
deep,  until  it  is  deep  enough  to  hide  a  man  on  horseback,  even  if  horse 
and  man  were  Kentucky  bred.  A  ravine,  with  trees  growing  in  it  and 
on  its  edge,  is  poetry  if  one  knows  enough  to  know  poetry  when  it  is 
written  in  prose  form.  This  ravine  lacks  only  one  thing  to  make  me 
love  it  to  excess.  As  it  is  I  love  it  quite  enough  to  satisfy  an  exacting 
affection.  The  ravine  lacks  water,  that  is  its  omission  which  alone  pre- 
vents it  from  perfection  of  beauty.  But  not  to  dwell  on  lacks,  which 
would  be  a  breach  of  courtesy,  notice  how  knowingly  the  ravine  jogs 
and  zigzags,  as  if  possessed  of  all  the  field;  how  it  beats  back  on  itself, 
as  having  forgotten  something;  how  it  makes  spaces  shut  from  winter 
winds,  where  birds  find  covert;  here  saplings  and  trees  of  sweet  sixteen 
climb  up  the  bank,  or  lean  over  the  edges,  or  stand  on  the  bank,  as 
guarding  a  secret,  or  stand  in  the  bottom  of  the  ravine,  like  lads  knee 
deep  in  summer  streams.  How  the  wild  grapevine  trails  with  its  inde- 
scribable grace  from  tree  to  tree,  and  tosses  out  long  tendrils  to  float  to 
and  fro  with  the  incoming  and  outgoing  tides  of  air!  You  shall  see  this 
ravine  in  the  picture,  and  I  take  pride  (albeit  a  religious  pride)  in  call- 
ing attention  to  the  fact  that  this  ravine  grows  on  my  farm.  If  I  can 
ever  get  money  (the  time  seems  strangely  remote  at  this  writing)  I  will 
dig  a  well  and  erect  a  windmill,  and  build  a  waterfall  in  this  ravine,  and 
plant  cress  along  the  watercourse,  and  have  a  lily  pond  at  the  far  side 
where  my  ravine  steps  off  my  farm  with  hesitant  step,  as  disinclined 
to  go.  In  one  thing  I  am  inflexible  with  my  hale  friend,  the  renter, 
namely,  that  no  limb  be  cut  or  broken  from  the  trees,  nor  any  briers 
be  cut,  nor  any  golden-rod  dug  from  the  banks  of  this  ravine.  And, 
withal,  how  the  ravine  thrives  under  my  ownership*  I  am  proud  of  its 
delight  in  my  partiality.  Each  year  the  place  grows  in  beauty  and 
tangle  of  growth,  as  if  eager  to  please  me.  Whether  or  not  I  am  a 
success  at  raising  corn  and  potatoes  I  can  raise  a  fine  ravine,  which, 
to  my  mind,  requires  much  more  ability  than  the  production  of  potatoes 
and  com. 

Have  you,  my  friend,  have  you  the  topography  of  my  farm  clearly  in 
your  mind  ?  The  hill-top  where  we  saw  the  sea  on  the  far  south  and  the 
bewildering  beauty  of  hills  and  orchard  and  harvest  field  and  woods 

203 


and  blue  to  the  north,  and  on  this  hill  the  red  clover  pasture  and  the 
plum-trees  and  some  gnarly  oaks,  then  down  hill  through  a  fringe  of 
woodland  on  the  steep  hill  incline  and  then  the  cornfield  and  the 
orchard,  and  after  that  the  rich  soil  through  which  the  ravine  digs  its 
deep  trench  and  grows  its  many  pastorals  and  on  the  north-east  corner 
some  noble  walnuts  which  shake  their  odorous  fruits  on  the  ground  after 
the  first  keen  frost  bites  into  them,  and  under  their  shadows  my  house 
of  two  rooms  is  built.  In  the  front  room  is  the  organ  and  in  the  back 
room  the  coffee  pot ;  though  I  have  scarcely  stated  the  case  with  the 
accuracy  such  as  marks  my  usual  observations.  Accurately  stated  there 
is  no  back  room.  Both  are  front  rooms.  I  think  highly  of  this  architec- 
tural plan.  The  family  lives  in  the  front  of  the  house,  which  gives  an 
air  of  gentility  and  breeding  not  secured  in  the  old  architecture.  The 
house  is  built  lengthwise  with  the  road,  which  plan  does  not  necessitate 
the  housewife  leaving  the  meat  to  burn  or  the  coffee  to  boil  over  while 
she  runs  to  the  front  room  to  see  who  is  going  past  in  a  buggy  and  what 
beau  that  Smith  girl  (the  one  who  was  sixteen  ten  years  ago)  has  now 
— but  she  can  keep  on  with  the  cooking  and  look  out  at  the  front  window 
at  the  same  time.  It  saves  shoes  and  time  and  nerve  force  and 
muscles,  and  biscuits  from  burning.  A  grasping  man  would  have 
patented  this  revolutionary  idea  in  architecture  and  vended  it  as  they 
do  proprietary  medicines.  Not  so  I.  In  this  open  way  I  give  my  dis- 
covery to  the  world  as  physicians  their  remedies.  The  design  oi  the 
house  is  as  follows : 

This  is  the  public  road 


These  are  the 
walnut-trees 


D           D            D   ° 

cp 

n 

n 

This  is  the  house 

204 

Note  (1)  that  the  c  p  is  an  abbreviation  for  coffee  pot  and  o  is  con- 
traction for  organ,  and  note  (2)  that  both  c  p  and  o  are  located  at  front 
windows.  Now  that  may  not  be  genius,  but  I  am  inclined  to  think  it  is. 
Whether  you  are  playing  on  the  coffee  pot  or  the  organ,  you  can  glance 
out  and  see  the  Smith  girl  with  her  city  beau  (sometimes  beaux)  pass 
and  neither  interrupt  the  aroma  of  the  coffee  nor  the  hilarity  of  the 
organ.  With  this  lucid,  brief,  and  yet  comprehensive  plan  of  my 
country  house  presented,  I  pass  to  other  parts  of  my  farm. 

You  will  do  well  to  come  and  take  a  drink  out  of  my  spring.  I  am 
always  glad  to  get  thirsty  so  as  to  take  a  drink  at  this  fountain.  It 
never  has  run  dry.  I  keep  the  thicket  growing  here  above  the  spring, 
with  neither  weed,  nor  vine,  nor  sapling,  nor  any  tree  cut;  all  the  under- 
growth and  uppergrowth  untouched,  because  I  want  dense  shade  for  the 
spring  to  enjoy.  This  soggy  damp  is  fitted  for  the  growth  of  ferns  (I 
have  brought  sandstone,  and  fern,  and  moss,  and  planted  here),  and  the 
spring  wells  up  quietly,  no  sputtering,  as  of  a  hen  announcing  that  she 
has  just  laid  an  egg;  but  the  water  comes,  not  cold  like  mountain 
springs,  to  be  sure,  but  cold  enough  to  need  no  iceman,  and  requires  no 
paying  of  ice  bills.  It  is  cold  enough ;  and  there,  in  plain  sight,  with 
the  foliage  reflected,  leaf  for  leaf  and  spray  for  spray;  and  drinking 
water  from  a  chalice  like  this  is  thirst-producing  as  well  as  thirst-sat- 
isfying; and  I  will  come  here  to  drink,  whether  I  am  thirsty  or  not. 
The  birds  drink  here  in  welcome  as  the  water  drowses  from  the  spring 
down  a  little  ravine  and  into  my  neighbor's  woods.  I  let  it.  I  am  not 
stingy.  What  I  can't  keep  I  give  away,  which  is  the  true  art  of  gener- 
osity. Come  and  drink  from  this  spring.  What  a  farm  this  is! 

In  every  play  there  is  a  villain.  There  is  one  on  my  farm.  In  ye 
olden  tyme  a  villain  was  a  man  who  belonged  to  the  soil — a  digger  in 
the  ground — a  vocation  very  honorable  to  this  day  and  to  all  days.  But 
this  is  not  the  sort  of  a  villain  I  allude  to.  This  is  a  live  and  vicious 
villain — a  bold,  bad  man,  who  carries  a  gun  and  a  kodak.  When  these 
two  peculiarities  combine  in  a  man  I  set  him  down  as  the  consumma- 
tion of  villainies.  Which  wickedness — the  kodak  wickedness  or  the 
gun  wickedness — is  the  wickeder,  I  am  not  prepared  to  say.  I  do  not 
here  give  my  mind  though  I  have  settled  opinions  on  the  subject.  This 
man  has  never  shot  me  with  his  gun,  but  has  often  done  so  with  his 
kodak,  which  is  a  breech-loader  and  always  full  of  shells.  This  instru- 
ment of  death  has  been  turned  on  me  when  I  have  been  playing  base- 
ball,  when  I  made  a  base-hit,  when  I  was  making  a  home  run,  when  I 

207 


sat  down  ii  the  center-field  and  made  my  mark,  to  the  great  delight  of 
the  college  boys,  whose  taskmaster  I  was;  when  I  have  been  walking 
through  the  college  campus  with  my  Horace  Greeley  hat  set  jauntily  on 
my  intellectual  forehead ;  when  my  shoulders  have  been  stooped  under 
life's  onerous  loads;  when  I  have  been  going  to  the  train  with  coat-tail 
horizontal  and  legs  vainly  beating  the  air ;  when  I  have  been  on  this 
farm  with  my  overalls  on  and  hay-seed  in  my  hair;  when  I  have  been 
talking  to  a  lady  with  whom  the  head  of  our  house  had  forbidden  me  to 
hold  dialogue ;  and  this  villain  has  moreover  sent  the  head  of  our  house 
the  picture  (villain!  villain!).  In  short,  there  is  no  time  when  he  should 
not  have  kodaked  me  when  he  did  not  do  it,  and  no  time  when  he 
should  have  done  so  that  he  did  so.  The  kodak  microbe  is  a  demor- 
alizing microbe,  in  my  observation,  and  makes  for  total  depravity.  The 
last  wickedness  this  man  was  guilty  of  was  putting  the  sun  up  to  take 
my  picture  when  I  was  in  the  mild  act  of  appeasing  my  hunger  at  noon 
in  the  woods.  This  is  the  picture  he  took.  When  we  (the  other  man 
and  I )  suggested  that  if  a  picture  was  to  be  thought  of  the  villain  should 
be  in  it,  he  said  that  much  as  he  desired  to  be  taken  with  us  nothing 
could  induce  him  to  because  he  had  to  pull  the  trigger.  He  was  the 
sportsman,  we  the  game.  This  seemed  candid.  We  (the  victim  and 
myself,  both  good  men,  he  a  banker  and  I  a  minister)  suspected  no 
lurking  animosity.  The  villain  looked  pious  (he  always  does ;  that  is, 
he  looks  as  if  he  was  either  at  his  devotions  or  going  to  them)  and  took 
the  picture,  but  when  the  proofs  were  forthcoming  gloated  over  us  like 
Mr.  Poe's  raven  on  the  pallid  bust  of  Pallas,  saying,  "I  would  not  be  in 
the  picture.  Nothing  would  induce  me.  I  am  a  temperance  man;" 
and  then,  with  Mephistophelian  finger  pointed  to  the  water-cruse  in  the 
ioreground,  which,  through  his  viciousness  (the  jug  was  his),  was  in  our 
midst.  "A  Sunday-school  superintendent,"  he  said — for  my  friend  the 
banker  is  a  pious  man  on  Sunday— "and  a  preacher  and  a  jug — ha!  ha! 
ha!  ha!  ha!  ha!  ha!  ha!  ha!  ha!  ha!  ha! "  Some  people  think  there  is  no 
.sin,  and  that  wickedness  is  a  piece  of  imagination.  They  do  not  know 
the  villain  or  they  would  believe  in  sin  and  the  father  of  it.  I  would  not 
exonerate  him  from  any  evil  design.  Nothing  will  tempt  me  to  put 
confidence  in  him.  He  is  well  connected,  and  is  a  man  of  brains,  but 
neither  ancestry  nor  culture  avails  in  his  behalf.  He  is  undeniably  wicked 
.and  refuses  a  work  of  grace,  and  will  not  attend  a  revival.  He  is  a 
biologist,  an  ornithologist,  an  entomologist,  and  I  would  not  put  it  past 
him  to  practice  vivisection  on  me.  I  would  not  feel  surprised  if  he 

208 


were  to  charge  his  kodak  with  chloroform  and  put  me  in  a  state  of 
coma,  so  as  to  photograph  my  freckles.  "Vigilance,  eternal  vigilance, 
is  the  price  of  liberty,"  said  some  old  orator.  That  may  be  so,  but  I 
know  that  eternal  vigilance  is  insufficient  to  guard  me  against  this 
villain's  depredations.  Every  gun  is  likely  to  kick  its  owner.  Some 

cameras  are  so.  This  camera  kicked 
the  villain.  Here  is  the  villain  himself. 
He  has  been  on  my  farm  among  my 
cornshocks  killing  my  rabbits  and  quail. 
He  is  caught  red-handed.  Though  he 
wears  after  his  name  a  learned  title  and 
browbeats  students  with  threats  of  poor 
grades,  that  will  avail  him  nothing  now. 
He  has  paid  no  heed  to  my  signs  on  my 
farm.  One  is  "Do  not  watter  stalk 
here."  Another  is 
"No  shoting  on  this 

has    found  farm."     He  has  paid 

him  with  my    M  K  no  attention  to  either 

birds    and   ffl        |^P«  I  sign.     His  kodak  has 

beasts  slung   •        ^    m.  JpB  m  caught  him  "watter- 

at   his   belt.     IB     %ftr  "     i     ,  mT     in£   nis    stalk,"   and 

My  word  for 
it  but   it   shall 
go    hard    with 

him  ere  he  gets  out  of  the  grip 
of  the  law.  He  will  rue  having 
sided  with  Mrs.  Mugwump 
against  me,  and  having  joined 
blithely  in  the  witticisms  at  my 
expense.  I  will  not  be  revenge- 
ful, but  just.  A  neighbor  has  the 
sign,  "This  farm  for  sail."  I  do 
not  have  that  because  this  farm 
is  not  in  the  market,  but  the  signs  I  do  have  mean  business,  and  the 
villain  must  find  out  signs  mean  what  they  say.  "No  lickin',  no  larn- 
in';"  but  I  mean  he  shall  not  grow  old  (he  is  already  grown  up)  igno- 
rant. I  will  see  that  he  "  larns." 

Then  the  villain  is  a  hunter.     He  has  no  conscience.     I  have  seen 

209 


THE  VILLAIN  AND   HIS    FRIENDS 


him  shoot  a  jack-rabbit,  and  a  hawk,  and  a  squirrel,  and  when  in  the 
presence  of  these  vicious  capers  have  heard  him  laugh  and  say,  "A  good 
shot!"  Will  a  man  laugh  at  a  funeral?  This  man  will.  He  does. 
Hunting  and  kodaking  demoralize  the  moral  nature  of  man.  The 
villain  is  old  and  bold.  His  conscience  (allowing,  as  a  matter  of  pure 
courtesy  to  him,  that  originally  he  had  one)  is  atrophied.  There  is  not 
even  a  vermiform  appendage  left.  I  have  known  him  to  shoot  quails 
out  of  season.  He  thinks  nothing  of  breaking  the  law.  Once  he  in- 
veigled me  into  carrying  the  game  he  had  slain  unlawfully  as  well  as 
murderously.  This  I  did  as  a  matter  of  courtesy  (for  I  am  a  Chester- 
field in  etiquette),  for  I  was  his  guest  (he  driving  me  out  after  his  red 
horses,  two  beasties  about  as  big  as  two-year-old  jack- rabbits),  and  I 
could  not,  with  my  code  of  manners,  refuse  mine  host's  request  to 
skirmish  around  and  pick  up  his  game ;  but  afterward  it  leaked  out  that 
he  did  this  because  the  law  holds  that  man  guilty  who  has  the  ill-gotten 
game.  Such  perfidy  I  had  read  of,  but  scarcely  believed.  I  thought 
lago  was  an  imaginary  creation;  now  I  know  he  is  a  photograph,  and 
I  could  find  Shakespeare  a  subject  for  a  sitting. 

Beyond  this,  the  villain  professes  to  like  me,  writes  me  postal 
cards,  takes  me  riding,  invites  me  to  his  home,  drives  me  out  when  the 
purple  aster  is  in  bloom,  comes  to  my  hospitable  board,  drives  me  to  my 
farm  and  says  he  enjoys  it,  praises  my. view,  says  it  is  "bully,"  caresses 
my  trees  (he  is  an  lago)  loans  me  his  red  horses  and  red  dog,  glows 
over  my  ravine,  says  nice  things  about  my  hackberry  and  shell-bark 
hickory-trees,  speaks  in  hopeful  terms  of  my  apple  orchard,  is  sympathetic 
in  my  fondest  aspirations  of  getting  ten  or  fifteen  dollars  rent  in  the 
remote  future,  and  even  suggests  I  may  some  time  get  enough  to  pay  a 
year's  taxes ;  and  I  being  of  a  confiding  turn  (interpreting  others  by 
myself)  think  him  well-meaning  and  virtuous.  But  this  man  "who 
hath  broken  bread  with  me  hath  lifted  up  his  heel  against  me"  (quoted 
from  the  Psalter).  When  with  Mrs.  Mugwump,  who  holds  my  farm  in 
slight  esteem,  he  joins  her  hilarity  at  my  expense;  echoes  her  wickedest 
snigger;  constructs  poor  jests  about  my  farm  and  its  achievements; 
joins  in  crude  and  unusual  remarks  about  "chiggers;"  laughs  loudly  at 
jests  at  my  expense,  refuses  to  look  at  me,  being  so  engrossed  with  Mrs. 
Mugwump's  humor  and  hospitality;  thanks  her  for  his  dinner,  whereas  I 
paid  for  it  and  the  black  girl  cooked  it,— well  he  is  a  villain.  That  is  all 
I  can  say  now.  Had  I  my  way  in  my  house  (do  I  need  to  say  I  do 
not?)  he  would  jest  no  more  at  me  over  my  fried  chicken. 

210 


The  seasons  all  come  to  this  farm.  It  is  astonishing  how  far  they 
come  to  enjoy  this  view.  Birds  from  far-off  woodlands  bordering  on 
the  gulf  come  here  and  nest.  I  think  highly  of  their  taste.  They  know 
where  to  come.  Thank  goodness  there  are  some  creatures  which, 
whatever  the  lack  of  the  aesthetic  on  the  part  of  the  many,  retain  a  fine 
Greek  taste  for  the  beautiful.  The  seasons  all  come  here  annually.  I 
have  never  known  them  to  miss.  They  are  as  regular  as  I  am,  and 
enjoy  this  farm  with  a  gusto  which  is  warming  to  my  heart.  Sometimes 
one  season  comes  first,  sometimes  another.  That  depends  entirely  on 
what  season  you  begin  with.  I  begin  with  winter.  Winter  on  this 
estate  is  a  rare  season.  The  land  lies  brown  and  beautiful.  The  many 
colors  of  a  winter  landscape  are  things  not  sufficently  attended  to  in 
popular  thinking.  People  talk  as  if  winter  fields  were  uneventful  and 
monotonous.  Nothing  is  less  true.  Winter  browns  are  quite  as  varied  as 
summer  greens.  My  woods  stand  black  in  winter,  especially  when  the 
skies  are  gray  with  no  hint  of  sunlight,  the  trees  standing  against  such  a 
sky  look  black  as  stormy  water.  Nature  indulges  in  no  black  colors 
in  vegetation  save  this.  And  I  have  seen  my  woods  gloom  against  a 
winter  evening  sky  like  a  rising  storm-cloud.  They  are  prodigal  in  this 
tempestuous  quality.  I  love  to  look  at  it  so,  and  can  all  but  hear  the 
mutter  of  the  thunder  which  in  summer  booms  intermittently  from  black 
thunder  heads.  And  if  you  walk  into  the  fields,  the  grasses  are  of 
varied  hues.  Some  are  light-toned,  almost  gray,  some  a  deep  russet, 
some  species  of  slough  grass  are  like  browns  touched  with  flame  full  of 
surprise  and  delight,  and  the  wheat  stubble  keeps  its  old  gold  all  the 
winter  through,  and  corn  stalks  have  the  richness  of  color  which  minds 
the  eye  of  a  lion's  skin  brown  as  the  desert  he  goes  fleetly  across ; 
and  golden-rod  stands  in  the  hedge-corners  grouped  in  its  miniature 
forests  graceful  in  form  as  when  they  lean  plumes  of  gold  in  autumn 
noons,  but  now  the  plumes  are  white  like  those  which  nod  in  a  knight's 
helmet.  This  golden-rod  flames  out  gold  in  autumn  and  snow  in  winter, 
and  whether  to  love  the  more  its  gold  or  snow  I  know  not.  They  belong 
to  the  two  seasons  and  in  either  are  radiant  to  my  eyes.  Weeds  are  brave 
winter  folk.  Flowers  die  in  autumn,  and  even  in  the  woods  the  bunches 
of  violet  leaves  are  pressed  flat  against  the  earth  and  have  lost  their 
green,  or  it  is  almost  altogether  blotted  out,  but  weeds  stand  self-reliant 
nodding  to  the  shivering  winds.  Winter  weeds  are  prepared  foods  for 
the  birds.  They  are  their  winter  pasture  fields.  God  is  so  thoughtful  in 
leaving  for  his  birds  a  spread  table,  standing  high  above  the  snow  fall 

211 


and  drift,  so  that  the  birds  shall  breakfast  at  every  hazard.  The  sun- 
flower stands  through  the  winter  storms  unintimidated  and  is  gray  in 
color  like  a  winter's  dusk  when  clouds  are  over  all  the  sky,  and  the 
leaves  in  the  woods  are  rusty  as  iron,  and  the  red  oak-trees  keep  their 
leaves,  a  kindly  shelter  for  the  houseless  birds;  and  what  a  brave  winter 
themselves  made !  I  have  been  beneath  them  on  winter  days  when  the 
sun  was  bright  and  genial  and  when  I  walked  without  a  shiver,  but  step- 
ping beneath  the  oak-trees  and  closing  my  eyes  and  listening  to  the 
whetting  of  leaf  against  leaf,  I  began  to  shiver  as  with  nipping  cold. 
Winter  leaves  in  the  wind  sound  so  wintery.  Winter  stays  on  this  farm. 
Then  spring  comes  laughing  like  happy  lovers.  The  earth  smell  is. 
in  the  air,  the  frogs  sing  every  night  and  very  early  in  the  spring  from 
the  ravines,  the  tenant  plows  the  brown  fields  and  turns  them  into  black 
and  the  crow  follows  in  the  furrows,  so  do  the  blackbirds  with  their 
garrulous  conversation ;  and  the  meadow  lark,  before  a  sprig  of  green  is 
anywhere,  tunes  his  voice  to  sing  a  spring  poem,  and  I  wonder  if  there  is 
anything  sweeter  than  a  meadow  lark's  music  floating  over  brown  fields 
which  have  been  mute  in  bird  voices  these  months  past.  On  my  farm 
the  meadow  lark  is  the  courier  of  the  spring.  Nobody  is  as  welcome  as 
he,  with  the  splotches  of  yellow  flecking  his  breast  and  his  springy  step 
as  if  he  owns  this  meadow,  and  his  constant  tryst  with  the  open  field 
(he  will  have  none  of  the  forest)  there  he  spills  out  his  music,  thence 
he  whirrs  his  springy  flight.  Sometimes  he  will  tilt  a  minute  on  a 
fence-post,  but  I  do  not  recall  seeing  him  on  this  farm  in  a  hedge-row. 
There  the  golden  thrush  loves  to  live,  but  the  meadow  lark  lives  on  the 
ground  where  we  men  and  women  walk.  I  would  be  pouting  all  the 
spring  if  he  did  not  come.  Contact  with  the  earth  gives  him  his  gift  of 
singing.  He  is  a  sweet  son  of  the  soil  and  dear  to  the  heart  as  love. 
The  blue  jay  is  belligerent  and  garrulous,  but  he  stays  with  me  through 
the  winter  sometimes  and  comes  very  early  in  the  spring,  and  I  love. his 
untuned  voice  as  it  cuts  through  the  air  like  a  sword  swish.  I  give  him 
warm  welcome  and  am  glad  he  is  come.  His  morals  I  can  not  control; 
I  have  trouble  enough  with  my  own ;  but  if  he  did  not  come  to  my  woods 
I  would  be  out  of  humor.  The  red  bud  gets  the  earliest  color  from  the 
skies  and  wears  it  a  trifle  haughtily,  being  as  I  take  it,  a  sort  of  vege- 
table aristocrat.  The  red  buds  have  no  beautiful  curve  like  the  elm, 
but  stand  angular  as  soldiers  on  guard.  Though  they  think  themselves 
aristocrats  I  will  not  quarrel  with  their  self  opinionation.  They  are 
here  and  they  like  my  farm  and  are  the  earliest  colors  the  woods  wear. 

212 


Therefore  are  they  welcome.     The  elms  have  the  earliest  cloud  of  green 
bloom  visiting  my  woods  except  the  willow.     Willows  are  first  comers 
with  their  leaves.     They  come  first,  the  elms  follow,  and  later  the 
buckeye  and  hickory  and  walnut  and  sycamore.       Gooseberries  leaf 
early  and  have  a  vivid  green.    The  oak-trees  are  tardier  than  anybody. 
They  are  late  sleepers.     Even  the  blue  jay's  voice  does  not  wake  this 
drowsy  sleeper,  although  it  clings  in  his  branches.      Nobody  but  the 
sun  can  wake  the  oak.     He  is  thick-skinned  and  impervious  to  hints. 
The  sun  must  come  and  spill  flame  on  his  face  or  ever  the  oak-tree 
wakes,  and  long  after  all  other  trees  are  green  the  oak's  brown  leaves 
with  a  dogged  tenacity  hang  to  their  year-long  home  till  the  new  buds 
thrust  them  from  their  hold.    Only  new  life  will  loose  the  grip  of  death; 
and  when  peach  and  cherry  and  apple  and  pear  and  blackberry  take 
their  turn  at  blooming,    O !  we  have  royal  mornings 
on  my  farm.    And  then  comes  the  late  snowfall  of 
falling  petals  of  blooms  from  apple-trees,  and  the 
bees  drone  and  take  my  honey  paying  no  royalty 
(like  a  foreign  publisher),   and  the    cooing   dove 
makes  lamentation  without  cause,  and  the  bluebirds 
chatter  so  as  to  warm  the  heart,  and  the  blue  violets 
make  a  man  wonder  at  the  dainty  doings  of  the 
fingers  of  the  God  of  beauty,  and  the  Mayapples 
hold  their  parasols  to  keep  the  sun  from  their  faces 

white  as  fresh  snows,  and  the  Sweet  Williams  hold 
their  blue  flowers  up  like  a  rustic  lad  presenting  a 
nosegay  to  a  woman,  and  the  wild  crabapple  pours 
its  delicious  odors  on  the  springtime  wind  and  spring 
is  come  to  my  farm,  and  April  rain  drips  from  the 
eaves  of  the  glowing  leaves,  and  clouds  and  sun- 
light play  hide-and-seek  over  my  plowed  fields,  and 
young  lovers  hunt  four-leaf  clover  in  my  cloverfield, 
and  the  birds  woo 
and    get    married 
with  never  the  in- 
tervention of  justice 
or  minister,  and  the 
frogs     sing     with 
melodious    voices 
through  the  sweet    *  * 

215 


* 


springtime  night,  and  a  hundred  perfumes  mix  in  the  fields  and  woods 
by  night — then  my  farm  is  an  Eden  meet  for  angels'  visits. 

Here  summer  comes  and  sweats  with  toil  of  growing  cabbages,  and 
peas,  and  lettuce,  and  pears,  and  onions  (that  perfumery  for  the  humble), 
and  cherries,  and  strawberries.  Now  stop.  Strawberries?  Why  didn't 
you  come,  friend,  when  my  strawberries  were  ripe?  I  had  tame  and 
wild  ones,  though  for  me  I  like  wild  ones  better.  But  any  will  do. 
And  when  the  tenant's  cow  gives  cream  instead  of  skimmed  milk,  and 
the  strawberries  are  ripe  and  luscious — well,  all  I  say  is  you  had  better 
happen  around.  And  when  summer  gets  down  to  hard  work,  and  ripens 
the  oats,  and  makes  the  corn  grow  so  fast  you  can  fairly  see  it  grow  if 
you  stay  half  an  hour,  and  turns  wheatfields  from  green  to  gold,  and 
makes  my  clover  bloom,  and  has  the  sun  work  long  hours  and  keep  the 
stars  out  late  o'  nights  if  they  want  to  shine  a  spell — then  summer  is 
bewildering. 

And  in  autumn  my  vineyard  is  worth  a  voyage  across  the  ocean  to 
get  to  see.  The  beautiful  leaf  delicately  contrived  of  Him  who  invented 
beauty,  throws  its  shadow  on  purple  clusters  with  an  earlier  frost  on 
them  than  gathers  on  the  housetops  in  October.  Then  I  forget 
whether  grapes  are  utilitarian  or  artistic,  whether  they  should  be  eaten 
or  looked  at  and  wondered  at.  I  love  to  see  their  abundance  of  cluster 
arid  loveliness,  and  am  glad  to  own  this  farm  ;  and  when  the  leaves 
begin  to  weary  of  fluttering  to  the  winds  and  fall  through  sheer  idleness, 
and  the  elms  grow  yellow,  and  willow  leaves  have  a  jaundice  look,  and 
the  ivies  are  glorious  as  skies  of  sunset,  and  every  tree  trunk  they 
engirdle  is  ruby,  as  if  it  were  not  tree,  but  gem,  and  the  maples  blush 
and  hang  out  scarlet  banners,  and  oaks  are  gorgeous,  and  when  the 
leaves  rustle  under  your  feet, — then  I  wish  fall  lasted  twelve  months. 
To  kick  around  over  your  own  leaves  is  to  taste  bliss ;  and  I  am 
haughty  to  own  a  farm.  Winter,  spring,  summer  and  fall  come  here 
to  enjoy  themselves,  and  they  are  very  welcome. 

In  summer,  when  I  lie,  surcharged  with  indolence,  down  by  my 
spring  in  the  shadows,  with  the  water  standing  in  pools,  and  catching 
leaf  and  sky  and  cloud  in  its  mirror,  and  holding  them  up  like  signals 
to  the  clouds  sailing  over  my  farm,  life  grows  glad.  We  are  a  hos- 
pitable lot,  the  farm  and  the  spring  and  I,  and,  like  Abraham  at  his 
tent  door,  hail  all  who  go  along  our  way  to  stop  and  be  sociable  (all 
except  the  assessor.  Not  the  farm,  nor  the  spring,  nor  the  ravine, 
nor  the  corn  growing  in  rows  or  standing  in  shock,  none  of  us  nor  all  of 

216 


TALL  TREES  RIM  THE  CREST 

us  like  the  assessor.  He  invades  our  quiet  and  disturbs  our  receipts, 
and  reminds  us  we  are  not  in  Arcadia,  which,  prior  to  his  coming,  was 
our  settled  belief).  And  while  I  lie  in  the  shade  beside  my  spring  on 
the  north  line  of  my  estate  and  on  the  lowest  levels  my  farm  reaches, 
it  is  sweet  to  half  drowse,  half  wake  in  the  quiet  while  the  wooded 
hills  high  above  shut  out  all  boisterousness  of  wind,  so  that  here  truly 
summer  quiet  lies.  The  day  dreams.  It  is  noon.  A  crow  intermit- 
tently and  lazily  calls  his  "  caw,  caw,"  but  the  birds  seem  tired  out,  and  a 
quiet  and  languid  breeze  is  all  that  puffs  summer  perfumes  in  my  face. 
And  the  slow  clouds  float  by  like  icebergs  seen  afar,  but  by  and  by 
even  the  clouds  fall  wholly  asleep.  Watching  them  through  the  leaves 
they  affect  me  as  having  forgotten  action  long  ago,  or  push  lazily  for- 
ward, like  a  drifting  boat,  and  then  sink  back  into  slumber  again.  But 
the  oatfield  on  the  farm  running  up  the  hill's  slope  to  the  woods,  nods 
its  thousands  heads  so  sagaciously,  as  if  to  say,  "No  doubt,  no  doubt, 
that  is  the  truth  of  it."  And  upon  the  hill,  where  the  tall  trees  rim 
the  crest,  how  solemnly  the  trees  toss  to  the  wind!  If  one  were  under 
their  shadows  there  would  be  laughter  in  the  leaves  and  the  sunlight 
sifting  through,  but  thus  far  removed  there  is  neither  sunlight  nor 
music,  only  the  solemn  waving  to  and  fro  of  plumes,  looking  strangely 
dark  against  the  sky  of  utter  blue.  In  this  accord  of  motion  seen  afar 
is  something  exceeding  remote,  as  if  from  some  far  headland  jutting 
out  into  the  spiritual  sea,  dim  companies  were  signaling  us  in  stately 
and  rhythmic  fashion.  In  the  far  off  elm-trees  is  the  wind  that  does 
not  blow  on  me,  nor  draw  near  my  green  hollow  lying  in  the  shadow; 
and  looking  from  afar  thus  seeming  like  a  boat  with  oars  that  dip  and 
lift,  out  on  water  against  the  sky  when  you  hear  no  drip  of  water 
from  the  lifted  oar,  nor  dip  of  oar  touching  the  water  again,  nor  any 
lap  of  water  against  the  keel.  Thus  I  love  the  quiet  of  this  croft,  where 
the  spring  is  better  than  wine  for  my  thirsty  lips ;  but  I  leave  it  and 

217 


i 


saunter  up  toward  the  woods  which  climb  the  hill  and 
stand  strong  and  manfully  upon  the  brow,  coquetting 
with  the  south  wind  in  the  summer  and  defying  the 
north  winds  in  winter.  And  just  this  side  the  hill- 
top I  stop  and  lie  down  in  the  shadows  and  listen 
—  and  hear  the  sea.  On  the  hilltop  I  can  sight 
the  sea  ;  below  the  hilltop  I  can  hear  the  sea.  How 
the  branches  toss  here  ;  not  sedately,  as  when  I  saw 
them  from  far  below  by  the  spring,  but  wildly,  and 
each  tree  after  its  own  fashion!  And  how  sad  the 
voices  of  the  wind  are!  One  could  weep  for  sorrow 
hearing  the  lonely  winds  washed  through  the  tree- 
tops.  In  Kansas  winds  are  hardly  ever  quiet,  and 
often  blow  like  a  triumph,  so  that  there  is  much 
singing  of  summer  songs  through  the  woods. 
Always,  by  daylight  in  particular,  you  may  climb 
from  the  wooded  valley  to  this  wooded  crest,  and 
walk  through  the  quiet  of  calm,  where  scarcely  a 
leaf  will  nod,  or  a  note  of  music  be  struck  by  the 
winds  from  the  forest,  till,  as  you  approach  the  hill- 
top, the  beat  of  distant  waves  on  distant  rocks  is 
audible,  and  when  at  the  top  you  are  in  a  very  fury 
of  fighting  surf,  dashing  white  spray  up  the  long 
rocks.  I  love  this  music  and  I  can  not  tell  how 
dear  it  is,  but  hearing  it  I  can  dream  and  see 
visions,  and  climb  God's  highest  hills  while  this 
surf-music  is  in  my  ears  and  in  my  heart. 

But  when    trees   are   leafless   in   autumn   and 

winter,  and  the  wind  rages  and  snarls  like  a  hungry 

lion,  and  tears  at  the  branches,  as  a  lion  at  the 

bars  which   make   his   prison,  then   is   the   music 

218 


frightful,  but  sublime.  Then,  when  the  woeful  surges  rush  through  the 
trees,  as  I  have  seen  ocean  surges  rush  at  high  tides,  with  stormwinds 
behind  them  over  snags  of  teeth  of  ocean  rocks,  where  bravest  ships 
of  knit  steel  would  have  been  laughingstocks  to  those  furious  waters — 
when  such  winds  blow  their  tiger  lungs  1  cease  dreaming  and  leap 
to  battle.  I  come  to  be  imperious,  as  if  I  were  Napoleon.  My 
courage  defies  impossibility.  I  could  climb  Alps  or  break  pyramids 
down,  or  leap  from  sea  cliffs  down  into  the  boiling  ocean  in  sheer 
luxury.  Nothing  daunts  me.  My  spirit  clamors  with  the  storm.  The 
giant  branches  twist  and  combat,  like  a  cyclops  caught  in  battle  in 
the  clammy  arms  of  an  octopus,  and  the  wind  blows  battle  charges, 
and  all  the  storm  drives  like  cavalrymen  going  into  the  fight.  Then 
the  music  is  something  to  be  remembered  for  a  century.  Give  me 
not  always  calm,  with  its  hushed  quiet,  but  the  clamor  of  the  riotous 
winds,  when  nature  is  fighting  nature  in  frightful  combat,  and  when 
neither  combatant  will  yield. 

Friend,  most  things  are  on  this  farm.  To  own  a  winter  tempest 
in  the  treetops  and  its  tremendous  music,  what  think  you  of  that?  I 
call  that  riches.  I  own  acres  of  soil  and  sunshine,  and  winter  and 
spring  and  October,  but  besides  I  own  acres  of  angry  wind,  and  furious 
onset,  and  a  Niagara  of  organ  music.  How  rich  I  am  owning  this  farm! 

A  wild  crab  stands  on  the  hill  where  years  ago  they . quarried  stanes 
for  a  college  hard  by.  The  quarry  is  now  overgrown,  a  reminiscence.  I 
am  glad  it  is  so,  for  I  like  its  dishevelment,  feeling  its  way  back  to 
nature.  A  huge  thorn-tree  stands  on  the  quarry's  edge,  and  in  the 
quarry  are  thickets  of  roses  where  birds  nest  in  the  sweet  summer;  and 
leaves  in  autumn  gather  in  the  disused  quarry  as  in  a  pool  where  waters 
had  drifted  them,  and  in  the  quarry  stands  the  wild  crab.  There  it 
stands  quite  alone,  but  never  lonely.  In  winter,  its  brawn  of  brazen 
muscle  sneers  at  the  tempests  and  looks  rigid  as  death.  No  hint  at 
smiling.  I  would  as  lief  think  a  brazen  pillar  would  bloom  as  to  think 
this  wild  crab  would  flash  into  flower.  Howbeit,  when  spring  is  come 
and  sets  up  housekeeping,  this  crab  lights  a  lamp  like  the  pleasant 
flame  of  an  evening  sky,  not  crimson,  but  a  gentle  flame  a  man  might 
warm  him  by,  but  would  never  burn  his  hands.  This  is  a  spring  fire — this 
crab  in  bloom.  How  I  love  its  tender  twilight  of  crimson!  I  warm  my 
eyes  here  and  my  heart;  for  hearts  need  warming  as  hands  do  on  a 
chilly  morning.  And  then,  saturating  the  air  like  the  perfume  of  a  fair 
woman's  garments  as  she  comes  to  meet  her  lover,  is  a  whiff  of  this 

219 


aromatic  flame.  I  did  not  know  when  I  bought  this  farm  that  it  grew 
spices,  but  it  does.  This  is  my  spice  grove  which  I  will  not  exchange 
for  sandalwood.  Who  could  have  thought  in  the  bare  winter  that  this 
crab-tree  was  an  alabaster  box  holding  precious  ointment?  I  never 
dreamed  it.  How  could  I  ?  But  now,  when  spring  has  come  like  fair 
Mary,  lover  of  the  Christ,  and  has  broken  the  alabaster  box,  lo!  the  air 
is  faint  with  fragrance  as  if  Christ  were  here  and  the  sacred  odors  laved 
his  sacred  feet.  And  were  he  here,  he  would  say  in  gentle  voice, 
"  Whence  brought  you  this  ointment,  very  precious  ?  I  have  not  known 
its  like  for  fragrance."  Friend,  come  to  my  farm  when  my  spice  grove 
of  one  wild  crab-tree  is  in  bloom  and  you  will  grow  glad  as  a  happy  child. 
And  then  I  have  a  whip-poor-will  in  my  woods  in  the  moonlight.  A 
nightingale  is  not  an  American  singer.  He  certainly  is  not  a  Kansas 
singer.  He  is  not  on  my  farm;  but  I  am  not  regretful.  I  have  the 
meadow  lark  on  my  brown  fields,  and  his  note  is  sweet  enough  to  make 
a  heart  long  for  springtime  just  to  hear  his  lute  voice  once.  Yonder 
where  the  woods  stand  black  against  the  hill  and  moonlight  makes  all  the 
sky  radiant,  and  dim  distances  are  enchanting,  and  heaven  seems  to  have 
settled  down  about  my  farm  for  the  night,  and  the  owl  hoots  with  a  leer 
in  his  voice,  and  the  screech  owl  makes  his  pitiful  complaint,  then  all  of 
a  sudden  my  whip-poor-will  sets  a-singing.  A  flute  is  not  clearer.  He 
is  not  a  player  of  wide  range  of  theme  or  tune,  but  has  one  he  seems  to 
love,  and  as  I  take  it,  having  listened  to  him  often  (how  often  ?  no 
matter,  not  often  enough),  a  song  his  beloved  is  fond  of,  for  when  once 
he  blows  its  sweet  staccatos  and  all  of  them,  not  one  note  omitted,  and 
stops,  I  think  I  have  heard  his  lady  for  whom  he  made  the  music  say, 
"  Sing  it  once  more,  beloved,  I  love  that  love  song  so ;"  and  so  like  any 
lover,  obedient  to  his  beloved,  he  tunes  the  instrument  and  sings  his  love 
song  once  again.  If  his  lady  is  as  I  am,  he  will  sing  it  night  by  night, 
nor  ever  grow  weary.  The  whip-poor-will's  voice  fits  the  moonlight 
and  the  starlight  and  the  dusk  and  the  dense  darkness.  O,  but  the 
notes  are  "  rainy  sweet."  I  will  ask  my  friend  Harry  D.  Cornwell  to  say 
his  say  about  our  common  friend  the  whip-poor-will.  Friend  Cornwell, 

have  your  say : 

"  When  apple-branches,  flushed  with  bloom. 
Load  June 's  warm  evenings  with  perfume, 
And  balmier  grows  each  perfect  day, 
And  fields  are  sweet  with  new-mown  hay, 
Then,  minstrel  lone,  I  hear  thy  note, 
Up  from  the  pasture-thickets  float — 
Whip-poor-will! 
220 


Thine  are  the  hours  to  love  endeared, 
And  summoned  by  thy  accents  weird, 
What  wild  regrets — what  tender  pain, 
Recall  my  youthful  dreams  again, 
As  floating  down  the  shadowy  years, 
That  old  refrain  fond  memory  hears-~ 
Whip-poor-will ! 

The  garish  day  inspires  thee  not ; 
But  hid  in  some  deep-shaded  grot, 
Thou  like  a  sad  recluse  dost  wait 
The  silver  hours  inviolate. 
When  every  harsher  sound  is  flown, 
And  groves  and  glen  are  thine  alone. 
Whip-poor-will. 

Then,  when  the  rapt,  voluptuous  night 
Pants  in  the  young  moon's  tender  light, 
And  wood,  and  cliffs,  and  shimmering  streams 
Are  splendid  in  her  argent  beams — 
How  thrills  the  lover's  heart  to  hear 
Thy  loud  staccato,  liquid-clear, 
Whip- poor-  will. 

Whence  comes  the  iterated  phrase, 
That  to  the  wondering  ear  conveys 
Half-human  sounds,  yet  cheats  the  sense 
With  vagueness  of  intelligence, 
And,  like  a  wandering  voice  of  air, 
Haunts  the  dim  fields,  we  know  not  where? 
Whip-poor-will. 

Now  while  the  white  moonlight  fills  all  the  void  'twixt  me  and  heaven, 
and  all  the  trees  are  flung  upon  the  grass  in  lifelike  silhouettes,  and  a 
gentle  wind  mixes  with  the  starlight  and  moonlight  going  through  the 
trees  caressingly  like  a  lover's  whisper,  and  the  whip-poor-will  flutes  his 
tearful  note  so  that  the  valley  hears  him  from  the  hilltops,  while  the 
birds  in  their  nests  are  so  asleep  they  hear  not  these  notes  of  his  wooing, 
while  this  radiant  mood  lies  on  my  spirit  like  heaven's  exceeding  calm,  I 
think  I  will  say,  "Good-night,  God  keep  you,  good-night ;"  and  I  will  pull 
my  cloak  about  me  and  lie  down  on  this  mosaic  of  moonlight  and  shadow, 
and  with  my  prayer  haling  toward  God  through  the  long  moonlit 
reaches  (for  no  prayer  misses  its  way,  not  one,  thank  God  for  that,  my 
heart) ,  I  will  lie  down  and  go  to  sleep ;  and  so  I  will  say  good-night 

223 


GLOAMING 


0 


GLOAMING 

HILD,  go  and  pray — for  see!  the  night  is  here! 
Through  cloudy  rifts  the  golden  lights  appear; 
The  hills  faint  outline  trembles  in  the  mist ; 
Scarce  is  heard  a  distant  chariot — list! 
The  world  's  at  rest ;  the  tree  beside  the  way 
Gives  to  the  evening  wind  the  dust  of  day. 

Twilight  unlocks  the  hiding-place  of  stars; 
They  gleam  and  glow  behind  night's  shadowy  bars. 
The  fringe  of  carmine  narrows  in  the  west, 
The  moonlight  water  lies  in  shining  rest; 
Furrow  and  foot  path  melt  and  disappear; 
The  anxious  traveler  doubts  the  far  and  near. 

—VICTOR  HUGO. 

Gloaming  is  day's  aftermath.  When  the  labor  of  the  light  is  ended, 
when  our  work  lies  behind  us  like  a  plain  crossed  in  journeying  toward 
high  hills,  there  is  a  borderland  sweet  as  dreams  lying  dim  between 
day  and  dark.  This  is  the  gloaming.  It  is  day's  respite  from  itself, 
when  what  we  are  is  merging  into  what  we  are  to  be;  when  the  world 
seems  far  removed,  as  waves  beating  on  a  distant  shore;  when,  as  in 
a  neutral  territory,  we  belong  neither  to  to-day  nor  to  to-morrow,  but 
in  a  certain  high  regard  belong  to  ourselves  alone,  and  thus  sit  solitary. 

Gloaming  is  the  time  of  glooming,  gloam  and  gloom  being  forms 
of  one  word;  and  so  understood,  how  full  is  the  descriptive  energy  of 
the  name  for  what  it  pictures!  Not  day  nor  night,  nor  light  nor  black- 
ness, but  this,  light  gloaming  into  lampless  darkness.  Gloom  sifting 
through  the  skies  like  powdered  smoke,  until  the  world  is  changed,  and 
the  one  word  on  the  gloaming's  lips  is,  "Toil,  take  rest." 

And  this  gray  gloaming  is  a  time  of  rest  for  the  spirit.  The  glory 
of  the  sunset  fades.  Light  retreats  like  a  vanquished  army.  Gray 
quiet  falls  on  land  and  sky.  An  unseen  angel  whispers,  "Peace." 

229 


Now  is  the  time  for  folding  the  hands — time  to  rest — and  rest  is  sweet 
when  rest  is  needed.  Now  is  the  time  to  watch  the  day  dim  and  the 
night  darken,  until,  at  the  end,  you,  who  began  your  dreamings  in  the 
day,  find  you  end  them  in  the  night. 

For  years  I  have  planned  to  spend  this  too-brief  gloaming  alone, 
not  thinking,  but  letting  thoughts  drift  over  me  like  summer  clouds, 
which  drop  their  passing  shadows  on  the  field  and  stream.  This  is 
mv  hour  to  banish  care;  to  leave  the  hush  of  prayer  on  the  spirit  and 
let  God  walk  silent  in  the  heart,  as  in  a  garden. 

"To  wander  lonely  as  a  cloud," 

as  Wordsworth  phrases  it.  If  I  may,  in  the  open,  with  the  neighborly 
sky  and  the  companionable  stars,  and  hear  the  moan  of  winter  winds 
through  naked  trees,  or  feel  the  touch  of  summer's  lips;  or,  if  I  may 
not  be  Out-of-Doors,  to  be  Out-of-Doors  in  spirit  and  watch,  as  I  sit 
in  my  study  before  the  lights  are  lit,  the  droop  of  ashen  hues  into  the 
sky,  and  the  shadow  these  ashen  tints  cast  across  our  spirit. 

Floating,  floating,  from  dawn  to  dusk, 

Till  the  pearly  twilight  dies, 
And  the  mists  float  up  from  the  sapphire  sea 

And  cloud  all  the  sapphire  skies. 
Hooting,  floating,  while  golden  stars 

Seem  to  float  in  a  sea  overhead, 
And  starry  lights  from  a  sea  below 

Glow  orange,  and  purple,  and  red : 
Till  we  seem  floating  out  from  the  sea  of  life, 
The  tempests  of  passion,  the  storm  winds  of  strife, 
Out  into  a  strange,  mysterious  space, 
Till  God  shall  find  us  a  landing-place. 

Drifting,  drifting,  to  lands  unknown, 

From  a  world  of  love  and  care. 
Drifting  away  to  a  home  untried 

And  a  heart  that  is  waiting  there. 
0  ship!  sail  swiftly — 0  waters  deep! 

Bear  me  safe  to  that  haven  unknown — 
Safe  to  that  tender  love  that  waits 

To  be  forever  my  own; 
Till  we  drift  away  from  the  sea  of  life, 
The  tempests  of  passion,  the  storm  winds  of  strife, 
Out  to  a  haven,  out  to  a  shore 

Where  life  is  love  for  evermore. 

-GOOD  WORDS. 

230 


The  day  dies  slowly  in  the  western  sky, 
The  sunset  splendor  fades,  and  wan  and  cold 

The  far  peaks  wait  the  sunrise;  cheerily 

The  goatherd  calls  his  wanderers  to  their  fold; 

My  weary  soul,  that  fain  would  cease  to  roam, 

Take  comfort ;  evening  bringeth  all  things  home. 

Homeward  the  swift-winged  seagull  takes  its  flight ; 

The  ebbing  tide  breaks  softly  on  the  sand; 
The  red-sailed  boats  draw  shoreward  for  the  night ; 

The  shadows  deepen  over  sea  and  land; 
Be  still,  my  soul;  thine  hc'ir  shall  also  come; 

Behold,  one  evening  God  shall  lead  thee  home. 

—LIVING  AGE. 

Ah  me,  heart!   thank  God  for  the  gloaming;    and  may  there  be  a 
gloaming  somewhere  in  heaven  for  those  who  want  it! 


GOOD-NIGHT 

The  day  is  done;  and  in  the  morning's  east 
The  shadows  lie,  dim  dreams  of  night. 

The  time  is  past  for  labor;  and  released, 
Like  galley  slaves  let  loose  in  fight 

On  seas  that  rock  with  battle  shock,  spent  strength 

Turns  face  and  step  with  love,  homeward  at  length. 

The  night  has  come ;  and  with  the  evening,  star 
Day's  pain  drifts  back  like  ebbing  tide; 

And  blessed  moonlight  ripples  o'er  the  bar 
Of  twilight.     Then,  Love  glorified, 

Our  God's  good  angel,  sings,  voice  sweet  and  deep; 

And  with  the  ebbing  music  cometh  sleep. 


14  DAY  USE 

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